WMD Report: We Bombed in Iraq

Posted by Harkavy at 8:48 PM, March 31, 2005

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.

Morning Report 3/31/05
Me Am Robin Hood

Posted by Harkavy at 9:22 AM, March 31, 2005

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.

Does Satan Speak to Me?

Posted by Harkavy at 11:45 PM, March 30, 2005

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.

Bush's Tape Worm

Posted by Harkavy at 8:28 PM, March 30, 2005

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.

Morning Report 3/30/05
Out of Order

Posted by Harkavy at 12:05 AM, March 30, 2005

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.

Morning Report 3/29/05: Antisocial Security

Posted by Harkavy at 10:33 AM, March 29, 2005

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.

Morning Report 3/28/05
Coming Soon! Police Academy: Baghdad!

Posted by Harkavy at 1:26 AM, March 28, 2005

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.

The Courage of Their Evictions

Posted by Harkavy at 6:26 PM, March 26, 2005

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.

Morning Report 3/25/05
Kyrgyz Republic National Convention

Posted by Harkavy at 10:53 AM, March 25, 2005

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.

The President Vanishes

Posted by Harkavy at 3:29 PM, March 24, 2005

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.

Morning Report 3/24/05
A Grinning Ruler on Life Support

Posted by Harkavy at 9:45 AM, March 24, 2005

AS IF WE need further proof that a president's smirk can drive his subjects nuts, protesters in Kyrgyzstan stormed the compound of strongman Askar Akayev early today in Bishkek, the beautiful Central Asian country's capital city.

They not only seized the White House. They also pelted the country's defense minister with rocks and led him out of the building.

The grinning visage of Akayev was nowhere to be found, so protesters trashed the building and threw portraits of him out of the windows. As the AP's Steve Gutterman reported, via the Guardian (U.K.):

Two protesters waved a flag from a top-floor window in the building, and others looked out of other windows as cheers erupted from demonstrators. Some furniture was cast out of windows of the seven-story structure.

"I am very happy because for 15 years we've been seeing the same ugly face that has been shamelessly smiling at us. We could no longer tolerate this. We want changes," said Abdikasim Kamalov, 35, proudly holding a red Kyrgyz flag.

The storming of the compound was the culmination of the first major rally in the Kyrgyz capital since opposition supporters seized control of key cities and towns in the south to underline their demands that Akayev step down amid allegations of fraud in this year's parliamentary vote.

Akayev reportedly offered to resign, according to reporters on the ground for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, which added:

At 5 p.m. local time, the state-run Kyrgyz National Television announced it would from now on provide broadcast time to all political forces and promised that there would be no censorship. The broadcaster has been criticised for one-sided coverage of the recent disturbances.

This new turmoil, which has creepy ramifications for all of Central Asia, was predicted last summer by the shrewd observers of the International Crisis Group. In its August 2004 report Political Transition in Kyrgyzstan: Problems and Prospects, the ICG said:

If Akayev tries to retain power, directly or indirectly, in fraudulent elections, 2005 will mark the end of Central Asia's democratic experiments.

If he leaves office and allows fair competition, it will be historic for Kyrgyzstan and the region. Kyrgyz political life is relatively sophisticated: both the public and much of the elite, would object to moves to undermine the democratic process. Anything less than peaceful, democratic transfer of power would severely damage Kyrgyzstan's ties with international financial institutions.

Unlike the current generation of protesters in the U.S., the Kyrgyz small-D democrats did not apply for a government permit before gathering in a group of about 5,000 and marching down Bishkek's main drag and then veering off toward Akayev's HQ and invading it.

The mountainous, landlocked country (about the size of South Dakota) has plenty of meadows and green valleys, but little oil. Nevertheless, the U.S. courted Akayev so it could take over former Soviet bases as a staging area during the now-aborted hunt for Osama bin Laden in nearby Afghanistan.

The main U.S. fortress, at Manas, is now named Ganci Air Base, after Peter J. Ganci Jr., a chief in the New York City Fire Department who died during 9/11.

The country was pretty rowdy even before. Akayev is one of those old Soviet-era holdovers, ruling a country that has a core of Orthodox Muslims chafing under his secular regime—Russians are only 12.5 percent of the population of 5 million, but Russian is a co-official language. The fertile Fergana Valley, which runs through several Central Asian countries, cuts through the southwestern part of Kyrgyzstan, but Bishkek, in the far north, has different fertility rites: a booming sex trade. Eurasianet's Abdan Shukeev filed this report in January:

The sex trade is booming in Bishkek, and authorities are struggling to respond. Prostitution is not a crime in Kyrgyzstan, and with no legal measures in place to regulate the industry, overburdened Bishkek police are proposing to either legalize prostitution or, alternatively, outlaw it once and for all.

The story added that Bishkek, where sex-ed textbooks were withdrawn in 2003 as immoral, may have as many as 7,000 hookers, in addition to 169 saunas, 177 hotels, and more than 1,000 "private apartments with sexual services." It turns out that some of Kyrgyzstan's cops are also pimps.

What a riot! Of course, murders and assaults of sex workers are on the rise. There's talk of licensing prostitutes, what's called "legalization" in Kyrgyz parlance, but the Eurasianet story notes:

Some prostitutes argue that legalization, in fact, will only allow police and public officials to make use of their services for free. "The state is unlikely to evaluate our work at our worth," said one procurer who gave her name as Jyldyz-eje. "They can't even provide war veterans with decent pensions, and what about us? They'd better catch real criminals and leave us alone."

Meanwhile, the rebellion against Akayev appears leaderless, and anarchy is feared. As the AP story says:

Unlike the revolutions in Ukraine, and in Georgia in 2003, the Kyrgyz uprising does not have a central figure at its head. That raises the likelihood of a jockeying for power if Akayev were to step down.

"I am concerned that for the next two months, or maybe even for a year, there will be chaos," said Iskander Sharshiyev, leader of the opposition Youth Movement of Kyrgyzstan.

The Government's human rights record remained poor; although there were improvements in several areas, problems remained.

Citizens' right to change their government remained limited and democratic institutions remained fragile.

Members of the security forces at times beat or otherwise mistreated persons, and prison conditions remained poor.

Impunity remained a problem, although the Government took steps to address it during the year.

There were cases of arbitrary arrest or detention.

Executive branch domination of the judiciary as well as corruption limited citizens' right to due process.

The Government occasionally restricted freedom of speech and of the press, and individuals and companies close to the Government used financial means to control numerous media outlets.

World Piece

Posted by Harkavy at 5:47 PM, March 23, 2005

PAUL WOLFOWITZ'S NEW job as Earth's chief banker might scare the shit out of some people, but can you blame him for wanting to work with his girlfriend?

And the job carries other perks. Rock-star world-tour perks.

The current World Bank president, Jim Wolfensohn, controls billions of dollars and travels around the globe to get his butt kissed by dictators—he even makes music with them.

Nero was just a country fiddler (or maybe just clowning around) compared with Wolfensohn. In May 2002, Wolfensohn shared some of his experiences in a D.C. speech, "Faith and Development—The Link Yet Tapped for Global Poverty Reduction." The occasion was the launch of the World Bank's Dialogues Across Cultures project.

First, Wolfensohn thanked current Wolfowitz gal pal Shaha Riza, at the time the Senior Gender Specialist for the World Bank's Middle East North Africa region, for getting everyone to come together. He continued with a fond reminiscence of his time spent with in Kazakhstan, the oil-rich Central Asian dictatorship run by Dick Cheney gallon pal Nursultan Nazarbayev:

I've certainly understood, in the 100-plus countries I've visited, that if you can engage on a local cultural level, it just opens all the doors. I just got a picture of myself with President Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan at his home in the country, with him playing an instrument much like a guitar, and me playing a cello surrounded by local instrumentalists.

Rock 'n' roll! I'll bet Nazarbayev wields a mean axe. (See below for a photo of him when he's not playing guitar.)

It stands to reason that not every music venue in raucous Kazakhstan is safe. The U.S. State Department's human-rights report on that country hints that you'd better stay unplugged if you're going to jam in Kazakhstan with any government authorities. The very month Wolfensohn was doing cello shots with Nazarbayev, this was also going on:

In an April interview that appeared in the official press, the Deputy Prosecutor in Pavlodar Oblast (province) cited specific instances where police had resorted to beatings and torture. In one case, two officers shocked a suspect with electric cables to force a confession after they had planted evidence on him. One of the officers was sentenced to five years in prison and the other escaped. A second case cited the use of suffocation as an interrogation technique; the police officer involved was sentenced to three years in prison.

And just after Wolfensohn ended his tour date with Nazarbayev, this occurred:

On May 5, 18-year-old Andrey Cherniy died after allegedly being beaten by a Pavlodar police captain some days before at a local disco where the police captain was on duty.

Were such topics discussed by Wolfensohn and Nazarbayev between riffs? I'm thinking of the dueling banjos on the bridge in Deliverance, but the State Department report wasn't relentlessly negative about the rich and rowdy "republic." Here are a couple of positive notes:

Prison conditions remained harsh and sometimes life-threatening, although there were some signs of improvements during the year. . . .

Reported incidents of self-mutilation in prisons to protest conditions declined during the year. Government statistics on self-mutilation generally matched information available to NGOs and human rights monitors. According to the head of the prison system, there were 14 such cases in the first half of the year, compared with 100 in 2001.

In any case, it's much wiser to make music with Nazarbayev than make him mad. The report notes that the dictator's government "selectively prosecuted political opponents."

As for potential groupies for any visiting World Bank troubador? Bring your own chick, if you want, but Kazakhstan is a prime spot for the sex-slave trade, said the State Department, and blowback is kept to a minimum because, at least in 2002, "the Government did not assist trafficked women who returned to the country."

Like many other musicians, Wolfensohn often travels with an entourage of women (see photo below).

It's not known whether any of them sat in with him and Nazarbayev during their jam session. Wolfensohn also didn't mention whether he talked with the Kazakh guitarist about the country's human-rights problems. But he did say that after he jammed with the dictator, things were, like, really cool:

I didn't need too many more discussions with Nazarbayev after that to establish an understanding that was positive.

I'll say! You get to jam with the ruler of an incredibly corrupt and drug-ridden country—as if you're touring with, say, Marilyn Manson but getting to meet people who are more like Charles Manson.

Kazakhstan's quite a place. The CIA Factbook notes:

Significant illicit cultivation of cannabis for CIS markets, as well as limited cultivation of opium poppy and ephedra (for the drug ephedrine); limited government eradication of illicit crops; transit point for Southwest Asian narcotics bound for Russia and the rest of Europe

Wolfensohn didn't comment on that chronic problem. He also didn't mention the Kazakhgate oil scandal, which three years later is still bubbling along in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

A long-delayed bribery and influence-peddling trial of key figure James Giffen is scheduled to finally begin in April. At last report, Giffen will claim that he was acting as an agent of the CIA and other U.S. government agencies and officials when he allegedly took bribes as a middleman between U.S. oil companies and Nazarbayev and allegedly laundered money for the dictator. You may not recall that only a few years ago, Halliburton CEO Cheney was a member of Nazarbayev's exclusive Oil Advisory Board.

Kazakhgate is just one of several unanswered topics revolving around the Bush regime. But that's all on the back pages, pushed aside by steroids and Schiavo.

Meanwhile, the fact that the current World Bank president has a "faith-and-development" thing going on must cheer the neocons. Faith-based global banking sounds like a plan for Wolfowitz, too.

Yes, the World Bank job sounds great, but Wolfowitz and Mrs. Riza have got to be extra careful and not build their hopes up too high.

Morning Report 3/22/05
Under the Revival Tent

Posted by Harkavy at 11:57 AM, March 22, 2005

Terri Schiavo probably didn't notice, but once again the courts have stepped in to try to stop someone from being kicked around like a football by the two other branches of our federal government.

Early this morning, Judge James Whittemore of the 11th Circuit's Florida Middle District rejected the Bush regime's orchestrated attempt to force-feed both Schiavo and the American public.

Whittemore joins the ranks of judges who have stepped in to try to halt the Bush regime. Yes, the right wing will point out that he was a Clinton appointee. But Utah federal judge Paul Cassell was appointed by Bush himself, and during a Congressional hearing on another person in a vegetative state (Alberto Gonzales), Vermont senator Pat Leahy pointed out that Cassell described a mandatory sentence (the kind of thing the Bush regime insists upon) as "unjust, cruel, and irrational."

It's not only judges like Cassell and Great Britain's Law Lords who are stepping up. There's Judge Gerald Tjoflat, down in Georgia, who wrote in a case involving protesters at the School of the Americas:

We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War on Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over. September 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country.

Not to mention other federal judges in the Hamdi and Padilla cases. Lots of judges have stepped up, as Anthony Lewis notes in the latest New York Review of Books. Riffing off a new tome on the Pentagon Papers crisis of '71, Lewis writes:

Congress as an institution has hardly exercised its checking power since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It gave President Bush greatly expanded investigative and prosecutorial authority in the Patriot Act. It has only intermittently challenged the unprecedented secrecy he has imposed on government activity.

That leaves the third branch, the courts. In the context of the "war on terrorism," would they decide a case like the Pentagon Papers the same way today? No one can be sure. But lately there have been signs that judges are unwilling to be cowed by the claims, made since September 11, of unreviewable presidential power. The Supreme Court ruled last year that citizens held without trial as "enemy combatants" must have an opportunity to answer official suspicions, and held that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay may file petitions in federal courts for release on habeas corpus.

Lewis points to yet another judge who stepped up:

The Supreme Court made its decision on citizens held without trial in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi. Rather than tell him its reasons for holding him and letting him answer, the government sent Hamdi back to his home in Saudi Arabia. Then, the other day, a federal district judge in South Carolina ordered the release of the other American held as an "enemy combatant," Jose Padilla. The judge—Henry F. Floyd, nominated by President Bush in 2003—said: "The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold petitioner as an enemy combatant."

You can read the Padilla decision for yourself. For a quicker take, consult the invaluable Punch & Jurists Weekly Newsletter:

After reviewing the law and the facts of this case, Judge Floyd ruled that he had no choice but to reject the President’s claim of authority to detain Padilla without charging him with a crime. "To do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country's constitutional tradition, but it would also be a betrayal of this Nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties."

Lewis, in his NYRB piece—which is particularly incisive about the desperately in need of repair Fourth Estate—says about the Floyd ruling:

It was only a trial judge speaking, and officials immediately said they would appeal. His decision affected one American citizen while mistreatment of prisoners overseas during interrogation, as FBI reports among other things have shown, remains inadequately investigated, much less forbidden. But that a trial judge reached those conclusions, and had the courage to express them, meant something. Perhaps, in the courts, the spirit of the Pentagon Papers lives.

Meanwhile, the spirit continues to move the Bush regime and its allies on the Christian right. In the Schiavo circus, the 11th Circuit judge, Whittemore, has folded the religious right's revival tent. But while Bush and Tom DeLay figure out how to continue their crusade, check out my colleague Jim Ridgeway's shrewd analysis. And go back and read the blogger Digby's Sunday sermon pointing out the hypocrisy of Bush's having signed the Texas Futile Care Law back when he was just a governor, not an emperor.

Digby's rant (thanks to the Daily Kos for publicizing it) is worth repeating—despite the continued "liberal blog" references. It's just plain good perspective, so here's more:

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terri Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terri Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo's because they will not be able to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terri Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom DeLay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

Posted by Harkavy at 6:39 PM, March 21, 2005

EMPIRES IMPLODE, AND the bigger their grasp, the sooner that's likely to happen. George Kennan said as much for most of the last century before he finally died.

So what does that mean for the New American Century? Using a skinny popular-vote "mandate" as an excuse, George W. Bush's handlers seem to be hurrying to reshape the planet. They're certainly acting as if their empire is already in its late stages: creating new crises to distract people from the current ones. (Whatever happened to the hunt for Osama bin Laden?)

The Imperial Neocons, or their allies, like to invoke God, but a more divine explanation rests with the gods. Plural.

Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank? What would Jesus do? Not that.

But these gods must be crazy. I'll bet the common folk of, say, Indonesia are looking forward to more of Wolfowitz. As I wrote in late December, the former U.S. ambassador to Jakarta is a longtime pal of Indonesia's particularly harsh military. I cited Jim Lobe's Asia Times piece about Wolfie's continued zeal in 2003 to train Indonesian military officers—even though at the time the military was being investigated for its role in the killing of two U.S. teachers in West Papua.

At the other end of Indonesia, December's tsunami was just the latest tragedy. Aceh province, on Sumatra, had already been devastated by Indonesia's military during a long-standing rebellion there.

See my colleague Jason Vest's new piece rounding up the details of Wolfowitz's previous Bali flops on the world's most populous Muslim nation. As I pointed out earlier, activists in Aceh are very familiar with Wolfowitz—Indonesia Alert calls him the "Velociraptor."

But Wolfowitz isn't a dinosaur. He's a god. Try to follow my twisted logic:

Assume that the neocons' American empire is the Roman empire. Wolfowitz, the powerful deputy secretary of defense, is the de facto Mars—at least a Mars Jr. to Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Right? Wrong.

Don't snicker, but I'd argue that Wolfowitz is more like Jupiter than Mars. Before he and the rest of these self-toga'd schnooks take the rest of us down with them, read this explanation from UtahSkies.org about Jupiter's place in the mythological heavens, and compare it with Wolfowitz's place in the neocons' empire:

[Myth:] Jupiter was one of the most important of the Roman gods, continuously evolving with Roman needs. In the early Republican era, when Rome was an agricultural city, he first appeared as an agricultural god in charge of sun and moonlight (Jupiter Lucetius), wind, rain, storms, thunder and lightning (Jupiter Elicius), sowing (Jupiter Dapalis), creative forces (Jupiter Liber) and the boundary stones of fields (Jupiter Terminus).

[Myth:] As Rome developed into a city of commerce and military force, Jupiter evolved into a protector of the city and state of Rome.

[Myth:] As with his earlier agricultural form, [Jupiter] could be invoked through a variety of titles, each dependent on the responsibilities being requested of him:
· As a warrior god—JUPITER STATOR, FERETRIUS and VICTOR.
· As great god of the Empire—JUPITER OPTIMUS MAXIMUS.
· As protector of the Empire—JUPITER CONSERVATOR ORBIS
· As protector of the Emperor—JUPITER CONSERVATOR AUGUSTORUM

Reality: Well, that's Wolfowitz. You could argue that John Negroponte is more versatile, jumping from his death-squad protector role in Central America to the U.N. to U.S. ambassador in Iraq to director of national intelligence.

But if Wolfie takes the corner office at the World Bank, he'll be not only the great god of the empire—St. Simoleon, in Christian terms— but also the protector of not only the empire but also of the emperor. My, that emperor sure has been wearing some nice new clothes. I'm pretty sure that Wolfie's World Bank will finance some new sweatshops in the Third World to keep Bush in fresh, fly threads.

By the way, if you think this Jupiter stuff is a stretch, at least I'm calling it mythology, which Ralph Epperson never did when he concocted a string of nutty conspiracy theories and actually got thousands of right-wing Americans to take it seriously. Along with William Pierce's Turner Diaries, Epperson's The New World Order and The Unseen Hand, written as the millennium was approaching, were Bibles of the '90s right-wing militia movement that spawned radical bomber Timothy McVeigh. One of Epperson's scenarios: On January 1, 2000, "NASA is going to cause a nuclear explosion on the planet Jupiter" and "George Bush will be at the Great Pyramid near Cairo, Egypt, to see it."

I must have missed that one. No wonder the militia movement lost steam. All the black helicopters are busy in Iraq, anyway.

Oh, and Epperson was talking about Bush Sr., of course. No one would have believed back then that George Bush Jr. would ever become powerful enough to even be a puppet in an imperial conspiracy.

But he did, and the planet's facing Wolfowitz's angry-looking red spot.

Dear Bush Beat . . .

Posted by Harkavy at 8:40 PM, March 20, 2005

Gonzales to Justice, Rice to State, Negroponte to National Intelligence, Bolton to the U.N.—stop!

And now Karen Hughes doing "public diplomacy"? Christ, even Business Week thinks that flack attack on the world is foolish, saying:

It's tough to call this move surprising. And it seems destined to advance the decline of America's image abroad.

OK, we get the point, Bush. You and your handlers think you can do anything you want. But could you at least stop piling it on so fast? I haven't had a chance to answer any mail. Jeez, I feel as if I were still shoveling shit at my dad's kennels.

Anyway, here are some letters that have been gathering electrons.

Lauren Steiner wrote:

Why are there no links on your page to email your column to a friend or for a printer ready format?

And Mike Brown of Waco, Texas, wrote:

Can I be placed on an e-mail list to receive Bush Beat each day at my e-mail address?

Thanks for writing, Lauren and Mike. Our crack technicians and I are working on those technical issues as fast as we can (see photo). In the meantime, try to stall Bush from invading anyone else's country.

Harold Vick of Fort Thomas, Kentucky, wrote:

You are a one-note samba with no respect for the truth whatsoever. This is the Hal Vick Doctrine: If you tell just one lie, you are a liar. Think about that at random times throughout the day.

Thanks for writing, Hal. I have great respect for your doctrine. Wait, I guess that makes me a liar.

Just after the tsunami, Bill Cummins wrote:

We know what President Bush is/has been doing to help the tsunami victims in southeast Asia. A lot! Now tell us what the Village Voice is doing to help. Or are you too busy Bush-bashing to contribute anything positive to the relief efforts?

Thanks for writing, Bill. I'm sure my colleagues have been generous. But as I said earlier, yes, I've been really, really busy trying to keep up with Bush's anti-relief efforts in the parts of the world unaffected by the tsunami.

Along about the same time, Dan Ryan wrote:

None of us like to be even a "little" wrong, and certainly no one wants to be "mostly" wrong, but, in your case, how does it feel to be DEAD WRONG?

Thanks for writing, Dan. It feels about the same as usual.

Steven Schroeder wrote:

Hi, Ward!
Just caught your column for the first time today. What a pleasure to read! Keep this great work coming! Best regards,
Steven Schroeder
Master Chief Petty Officer,
U.S. Navy, Retired

Thanks for writing, chief.

*Sigh* You guys are such fossils.

Thanks for writing, Tim of Angle. Who are these "you guys" you're talking about?

Dalerstock wrote:

Thank you for the amusement. If it weren't for some humor—God help us!!!

Thanks for writing, Dalerstock. I hope she does help us.

Dan Cabaniss wrote:

Thanks for the good read. Never saw your column until today. It made me laugh, mostly because it's ridiculous bullshit. You might as well just forward people to Michael Moore's site. Thanks for the giggles.

Thanks for writing, Dan. I never forward anyone to other sites. Sorry.

K.H. wrote:

Dear Fellow Citizen:

I am an American citizen who has been subjected to criminal abuse at the hands of the FBI since 1994. Their crimes include thought reading, physical torture, verbal abuse broadcast at me, and a take-over of my dreams at my expense.

Because I became aware of my abuse by their verbal broadcasting of my thoughts to me, their scripted taped responses, the comments of the agents on shift in response to my thoughts—or to augment their abuse, and dream manipulations, I have followed their agenda pretty much since its conception. Mostly through T.V. and a little through newspapers. Until recently, information on the method of their verbal broadcasting (which can be heard by the victim, but not by others in the same vicinity) has been kept secret. . . .

Thanks for writing, K.H. Yeah, most people seem to receive their orders from TV, not newspapers.

Mr. X Marked the Spot

Posted by Harkavy at 2:08 PM, March 20, 2005

TOO BAD THAT George Kennan, the famed "Mr. X" of last century's Cold War, died before he could inspire a containment policy to stop this century's homegrown empire-builders. Instead of the Soviets, we're the ones who need to be contained, and later in his life, Kennan recognized that—or at least he said he did.

His '40s ideas of how to contain the Soviet empire, set out in the "Long Telegram" and in "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," a July 1947 Foreign Affairs article he penned as "Mr. X," helped set in motion the Cold War. But subsequent generations of right-wingers went farther in their military blustering toward them there dirty Reds than Kennan would have.

In fact, Kennan became an opponent of the Vietnam War; he was a trenchant critic of American foreign policy after he formally exited the State Department more than half a century ago. Of course, he lived so long that he had plenty of time to perhaps try to rewrite some of the history that he had a hand in making.

That and other things about Kennan are abundant online. You could start with Wikipedia's bio. Or, try the interesting and comprehensive page of links George F. Kennan on the Web, compiled by Vancouver, Canada, computer jock Russil Wvong.

First, though, read Condoleezza Rice's short, official statement released yesterday. It starts:

It is with profound sorrow that I learned today of the passing of George F. Kennan. I knew him, and I admired him as one of the greatest strategists in the history of American foreign policy. He had a profound influence on me.

Yeah, well, not enough of an influence. Here's a snatch of Kennan that Rice obviously doesn't profoundly recall. Speaking about a particular war we were waging, Kennan once told a dinner crowd in Newark:

[N]o conceivable political outcome could justify the attendant suffering and destruction.

And that's not the only way this effort has been unsound. It has also been unsound in its relation to our own world responsibilities and to our responsibilities here at home. It has represented a grievous disbalance of our world policy. It has riveted an undue amount of our attention and resources to a single secondary theater of world events. It has left us poorly prepared, if not helpless, to meet other crises that might occur simultaneously elsewhere in the world. And finally, it has proceeded at the cost of the successful development of our life here in this country. It has distracted us and hampered us in our effort to come to grips with domestic problems of such gravity as to cry out, as we all know, for the concentrated, first-priority attention of both our government and our public.

These are indeed grievous drawbacks to any sort of military effort. They were all clearly visible a long time ago. It did not take the agony and the grievous human losses of these past two to three years to make them evident to anyone who wanted to see.

Sounds like Iraq, right? Kennan was speaking about Vietnam.

He made those remarks at a February 1968 dinner introducing Eugene McCarthy, who was challenging an earlier warmongering Texan, Lyndon B. Johnson. Kennan's little speech can be found in the New York Review of Books. It's also excerpted in one of the best fairly recent pieces about Kennan, Ronald Steel's essay in the April 29, 2004, NYRB. (If you have to subscribe, don't whine. The NYRB is must reading these days.)

Even the way Steel began his piece will give you more perspective on Kennan than you're likely to get from most of the establishment media:

George Kennan, who recently celebrated his hundredth birthday, has been best known as the author of the containment doctrine—an ill-defined formula he proposed as a government official early in the cold war for confronting the Soviet Union with a vigorous American "counterforce."

This is a great pity, for it is among the least of his accomplishments, and the one that most distorts the subtlety of his mind and the acuteness of his sensibility. Indeed it is one that he himself later denounced as being excessively focused on military rather than political containment.

Not that Kennan became a liberal hippie, y'understand. As Steel put it:

Certainly not a conservative in the way the term is today used in American politics, Kennan is a classic, organic conservative, the intellectual companion of such other historical romanticists as Ortega y Gasset and Spengler. What he deplores is the messiness and leveling of mass democracy, where the median is often the lowest common denominator. What he admires is order, tradition, and an aristocracy of taste and values. Naturally communism is even more abhorrent to him than mass democracy or untrammeled capitalism, for it compounds the sin of leveling by stifling expression.

That's right. He was from the snooty class, perhaps, but he didn't like the stifling of expression. Kennan fought fire with fire, not just with firepower, like the idiotic Bush regime. He was cunning and sneaky, as a diplomat should be. But he wasn't trigger-happy and he spoke his mind—and Kennan had a mind from which to speak.

Steel reproduces (and so will I) a passage from a 1999 NYRB interview of Kennan by Richard Ullman. Here's that snippet, from a conversation that took place just after Kosovo simmered down:

Ullman: The United States is these days the world's only superpower. How long will this last?

Kennan: If you measure it only by military statistics alone, it could last, I suppose, for a long time. We have by the tail, after all, in the form of our Pentagon, a vast bureaucratic monster that we don't know even how to cut down, not to mention to bring fully under control. But purely military power, even in its greatest dimensions of superiority, can produce only short-term successes. Serving in Berlin at the height of Hitler's military successes, in 1941, I tried to persuade friends in our government that even if Hitler should succeed in achieving military domination over all of Europe, he would not be able to turn this into any sort of complete and long-lasting political preeminence and I gave reasons for this conclusion. And we were talking, then, only about Europe. Applied to the world scene, this is, of course, even more true. I can say without hesitation that this planet is never going to be ruled from any single political center, whatever its military power.

Kennan's breadth, of course, encompassed more than just the politics of politics. He was long a culture critic. I doubt that he ever pestered Jerry Springer for tickets—as the British are about to do. Here's more from Kennan during the Ullman interview:

Ullman: It isn't only our military power that makes us No. 1. For better or worse, our cultural impact is equally profound. The world flocks to American popular culture.

Kennan: This, alas, appears to be true. We export to anyone who can buy it or steal it the cheapest, silliest, and most disreputable manifestations of our "culture." No wonder that these effusions become the laughingstock of intelligent and sensitive people the world over. But so long as we find it proper to let millions of our living rooms be filled with this trash every evening, and this largely to the edification of the schoolchildren, I can see that we would cut a poor figure trying to deny it to others beyond our borders. Nor would we be successful. In a computer age, it is available, anyway, for whoever wants to push the button and receive it. And so we must expect, I suppose, to appear to many abroad, despite our military superiority, as the world's intellectual and spiritual dunce, until we can change the image of ourselves we purvey to others.

But is there a dunce cap big enough to fit on Bush's swelled head?

Morning Report 3/18/05
Congress on Steroids

Posted by Harkavy at 9:52 AM, March 18, 2005

ONE OF OUR national pastimes took a beating Thursday at the hands of a 'roid-raging Congress. Unfortunately, it was baseball, not Iraq.

Thursday's House hearing wasn't the first time a friendly witness earnestly said into a Capitol Hill microphone, "I will do everything I can, if you will allow me, to turn this into a positive."

That's what moist-eyed Mark McGwire—definitely in the shrunken-ball era of his life— told the members of the House Government Reform Committee. Usually, such an offer is met with platitudinous praise. Not this time.

Pecs' bad boy didn't knock anything out of the park. Even when he choked up, the retired slugger didn't make a hit with Congress.

Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle did a pretty good job this morning of capturing the moment of Congress grilling baseball players, instead of posing for pictures with them:

We found out that McGwire is retired and doesn't want to look back, nor talk about his own involvement in steroids, though he'd make a "great" spokesman against them.

McGwire—who looked exponentially uncomfortable as each member of Congress set out to prove they had Googled "Andro"—did make this unfortunate comment: "I believe there's a reason I'm here. To turn this into a positive thing, not a negative thing." Uh, two things about that, Mark: First, never use "positive" and "negative" when speaking about steroids. Second, you were actually there so they could titter about your home run records and whether any juice was involved. Same for Sosa. Maybe you didn't get the memo or see the subtle wink-wink and nudge-nudge. Palmeiro and Schilling were there to represent all that's good (and "clear" free) about baseball. Thomas played the part of the forgotten via-satellite host. Larry King does this nightly—it's a hoot. "Oh, hey, Frank, sorry, we're out of time."

Baseball writer Jayson Stark of ESPN.com was like a cop-beat reporter stumbling onto the scene of a traffic accident. He wrote of McGwire:

He drove his reputation off a cliff Thursday, and left his legacy irreparably splattered. Very possibly beyond repair.

Stark also accidentally pointed to a more significant part of the hearing when he recounted a colloquy between McGwire and Indiana's Mark Souder, who chairs the panel's subcommittee that supposedly deals with "drug policy":

"There's a simple way to solve this," Rep. Mark Souder lectured [McGwire] Thursday, "[by saying], 'I am clean.' . . . The American people can figure out who's willing to say that and who isn't.

"If the Enron people came in and said, 'I don't want to talk about the past,' " Souder went on, looking McGwire straight in the eyeballs, "you think we'd let them say that?"

Oh, that's so brave. But practically every member of Congress who bathed and basked in the public spotlight at Thursday's hearing stands in the shadows when it comes to topics like the Iraq debacle, tax cuts for the wealthy, and the Bush regime's consistent and continual lying.

The only rep who wasn't a hypocrite on Thursday was California's Henry Waxman—and he didn't even rate a mention in the Washington Post's story. Courteous but firm, he grilled players, owners, everyone. He does the same thing when it comes to Iraq and other topics, as I've frequently pointed out.

Instead of letting baseball officials keep trying to "regulate" themselves, Waxman advocates a national anti-steroid policy. That's too muscular an approach for Congress to take. "Regulation"? That's a dirty word to the GOP leadership and Bush regime.

But Waxman was the only person to provide the real background of baseball owners' 30-year history of "self-regulation" of steroids—they did nothing and they're even covering up that coverup.

The sport experienced a lucrative revival in the late '90s, thanks to a dramatic home-run race by McGwire and Sammy Sosa and to an astounding (and suspicious) rise in slugging by unusually muscular players.

Waxman lays out the steroid coverup by owners, players, and Congress in a background memo.

Compare that information with the prepared statements by Thursday's panelists (nicely compiled and presented by Waxman's crew).

Meanwhile, more important topics still await full hearings by Congress. Like the Bush regime's unwarranted invasion of Iraq, the thousands of dead people that have resulted, and the scandal of "reconstruction."

Spurred by Bush's astonishing choice of the destructive Paul Wolfowitz as the next World Bank chief (the guy charged with providing the money to reconstruct the rest of the world), Ed Helms of The Daily Show pointed out last night in his "Add Hawk" segment: "George W. Bush has huge balls. They're enormous!"

That probably rules out steroids as an explanation for Bush's behavior. But he's a puppet anyway. We'd probably have to go on one of Antonin Scalia's duck hunts to get a look at Dick Cheney's balls.

Borrowing from the techniques employed by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib penal colony, I could see myself conducting that probe:

Harkavy (grabs Cheney's balls): Cough.

Cheney: Ahem.

Harkavy: Cough. Again.

Cheney: Ahem. Ow! You're hurting me.

Or, maybe we could play poker with Cheney in another way.

In any case, hearings on Capitol Hill are indicated. Except that Congress's balls are as tiny as McGwire's. You can tell by the way most of its members harrumph.

The Shrunken-Balls Era

Posted by Harkavy at 6:18 PM, March 17, 2005

WE STILL DON'T know if Mark McGwire was using steroids during his record-setting home-run binge a few years back. But steroids are known to shrink testicles, and McGwire's balls vanished this afternoon on Capitol Hill.

The baseball/steroid hearing by the House Government Reform Committee was the expected dog-and-pony show, and ex-player Jose Conseco did his trick and eagerly rolled over on his ex-colleagues. But McGwire's yips stole the show.

Not everyone acted like a weasel. There's always been a question about whether Babe Ruth pointed before he hit one out, but there was no mistaking what top slugger Rafael Palmeiro did this afternoon: He pointed at the members of Congress and said, "I have never used steroids."

McGwire, on the other hand, entered a meaningless statement into the record and then wouldn't even answer directly when asked whether he was taking the Fifth.

"There's so much negativity," McGwire whined. "I want to be positive."

Well, now we have reason to be positive, Mark, when it comes to the question about whether you did steroids. Did you legitimately earn your records and your applause? I know, I know, you don't want to talk about the past.

No longer appearing Hulk-like, as he did in during the memorable summer of '98, McGwire got all teary-eyed and choked up about the subject of steroids, and he volunteered to be a "national spokesman" to help others. What a guy! What a hero! What a role model!

What a schmuck. In retrospect, those might have been tears for fears.

In so many words, McGwire did indeed take the Fifth about whether he had ever used steroids.

And even when the subject of his known past use of the steroid "precursor" andro came up, McGwire wouldn't talk about it, saying over and over to his surprisingly brave questioner, Republican John Sweeney of New York, "I'm not here to talk about the past."

The "future" was his stated focus. McGwire was present and unaccountable, even though andro was legal when McGwire admitted using it. That testimonial by the slugger a few years ago made sales of andro zoom. As CBS News reported in March 2004:

Andro's use skyrocketed after McGwire said he used it in 1998, the year he hit a record-setting 70 home runs for the St. Louis Cardinals. He has said he later quit the supplements.

Medical studies show andro does raise testosterone above normal levels. Side effects of elevated testosterone include acne, baldness, and a drop in the so-called good cholesterol that could lead to heart disease.

Critics are especially concerned about andro's effects if taken by children while they're undergoing puberty.

But testimonials are one thing, and testimony is another. McGwire won't even take questions about andro these days.

This afternoon he showed that he can still make balls disappear—his own.

Pretty embarrassing—and idiotic—for a guy whose public celebrity depends entirely upon his past achievements to insist that he's not "here" to talk about the past. Leave aside his family and friends. The past—his baseball past—is the only damn thing about McGwire's life that's interesting, as far as the general public is concerned.

And what about baseball fans? Millions of them are addicted to the sport in large part because of its rich and highly detailed statistic-based history. Statistics that include his hundreds of home runs. And McGwire doesn't want to talk about the past?

Retired from the St. Louis Cardinals for four years now, he still sounded like a cardinal—the kind who's being grilled about pedophilia.

Who wants a national spokesman who won't even speak about himself?

I mean, do you see Cardinal Bernard Law, who covered up sex scandals, doing public-service announcements urging citizens to promptly report pedophile priests?

If McGwire wants to be a "national spokesman" about steroids, and thereby reap more adulation from the public, his publicists will have to try to repair the damage from his non-testimony Thursday. But that might not be so difficult, because star jocks get away with murder in this annoying celebrity culture.

Maybe, though, McGwire should start taking a supplement again. Only this time, make it truth serum.

Morning Report 3/16/05
A Tragic Crush

Posted by Harkavy at 12:29 PM, March 16, 2005

U.S. ARMY ENGINEERS SWEAR that Caterpillar's huge D-9 bulldozer "is worth its weight in gold," but Rachel Corrie paid the ultimate price.

Exactly two years ago today, the 23-year-old activist was crushed to death in Israel by one of Caterpillar's other big machines while she protested the bulldozing of Palestinian homes.

Yesterday, lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights and partnering law firms sued the Peoria, Illinois, corporation, explaining it this way:

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western Federal District of Washington, alleges that Caterpillar, Inc. violated international and state law by providing specially designed bulldozers to Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that it knew would be used to demolish homes and endanger civilians.

Corrie, a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was in Israel as a volunteer peace activist. The CCR's announcement of the suit (read the actual filing here) excoriated the Israeli Defense Forces for using the D-9, which is also in heavy use in Iraq, where it pushes around more rubble without cause. The New York-based advocacy group noted:

Over the past four years, the IDF has used Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy more than 4,000 Palestinian homes, injuring, killing, or leaving homeless scores of individuals in the process. Rights groups have sent over 50,000 letters to Caterpillar Inc. executives and CEO Jim Owens, decrying the use of Caterpillar bulldozers to carry out human rights abuses.

Caterpillar, which heavily markets to the U.S. and Israeli military, strongly denies responsibility for what governments do with its equipment.

But Jennie Green, a senior attorney with the CCR, says:

"International law clearly provides that corporations can be held accountable for violations of international human rights. Rachel Corrie, a young American killed abroad because Caterpillar purposefully turns a blind eye as to how their products are used, must have access to justice."

And speaking of governments, the CCR added:

The Corries also filed a tort claim today in Israel against the State of Israel, the Israeli Defense Ministry, and the IDF for their role in the death of their daughter. They are represented by advocate Hussein Abu Hussein.

"The brutal death of my daughter should never have happened," says surviving mom Cindy Corrie. "We believe Caterpillar and the IDF must be held accountable for their role in the attack on my daughter Rachel."

For details on Caterpillar from the activists' perspective—prone and in danger—see the Jewish Voice for Peace's "STOP CATERPILLAR" campaign.(Jewish peace movements are vibrant in Israel, but not as common in the U.S. Bay Area-based JVP, one of the strongest such U.S. organizations, is always in danger of being drowned out by the conservative American Jewish establishment for advocating peace and coexistence for Jews and Palestinians.)

Caterpillar itself is certainly conscious of its image. In 2003, the company sued Disney for copyright infringement, but the real purpose was to fight Disney's depiction of Caterpillar in the DVD movie George of the Jungle 2 as the most evil of earth-movers. Andy Kravetz of the Peoria Journal-Star explained at the time:

According to the four-count suit, the movie's central plot is how George, played by Christopher Showerman, and his computer-animated animal friends attempt to stop an evil army of "industrialists seeking to ravage and destroy the jungle."

Seems the final battle pits George and the animals against an army of Caterpillar Wheel Loaders. It didn't help, the suit goes on to state, that the movie's narrator calls the machines "maniacal," "deleterious dozers," and "bulldozing bullies."

Several photos included with the lawsuit show the Cat logo and the word "Caterpillar" featured prominently in what the company says is the "final battle between good and evil."

And speaking of evil, Halliburton subsidiary KBR, the main Defense contractor in Iraq, has overall supervision of the fine (and lucrative) work that Caterpillar's bulldozers have done in Iraq. It's a symbiotic relationship: Halliburton's former CEO, Dick Cheney, still paid by the company, leads us into war, resulting in multi-billion-dollar contracts to support our troops while they bomb Iraq into rubble. Then, when "reconstruction" starts, KBR again gets huge contracts to re-arrange the rubble back into cities and villages.

Ooh, the earth moves for all of our defense contractors. As Halliburton proudly says of its KBR subsidiary:

As a result of our unique experience in the Middle East and our accomplishments after the first Gulf War, KBR was awarded a contract to do similar work in post-war Iraq. Knowing that the situation would be similar, knowing that KBR had the experience, and knowing that KBR would do it well, KBR was not only the best choice, but the only choice.

Our work in Iraq is aimed at making the job of our assembled armed forces easier. It is also aimed at helping to provide a better future for the Iraqi people, whose economy and future well-being is dependent to a great degree on the preservation of its oil wells. KBR will be doing all of that and more in Iraq, because building a better future, every day, is what KBR is all about.

And always there to help is Caterpillar. The immense profits—each D-9 costs $1 million— must be worth a Cheshire grin or two by Cat execs. After all, their 16 new armored D-9 Caterpillar bulldozers were "fielded for the first time in Iraq with great success," according to Military Engineering magazine, which breathlessly added:

Army engineers says the armored Caterpillar giant is worth its weight in gold. Particularly suited for urban warfare, its 70 tons and power are well-suited to knock aside heavy obstacles, while armor protects operators in the cab and hydraulics.

And don't forget about Caterpillar's D-7g 'dozer:

Workhorses of the invasion, and now of reconstruction, D-7s were heavily used to push up miles of berms to surround camps and other facilities for force protection. Berming begins whenever units pause to bed down and is repeated again and again as they move.

Caterpillar is simply knocking itself out with innovative techniques for today's empire-building. As the AP's Gavin Rabinowitz noted in October 2003:

The giant Caterpillar bulldozer, used by the Israeli military to destroy Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, now comes with a controversial new feature: remote control.

Israel says its remote-control technology will lower risks to soldiers. But Palestinians fear it will lead to more frequent raids using the machines and make the three-year conflict even bloodier.

The remote-controlled D-9 bulldozer and a remote-control version of the Humvee, equipped with machine guns, were developed by the Israeli army and the Technion Institute of Technology. Both machines are U.S.-made, with Israeli modifications.

Rabinowitz added that the Israeli military "regularly demolishes suicide bombers' homes and other buildings militants are suspected of using for cover to attack Israelis."

In the spread of Western-style democracy and business practices throughout the Middle East, the D-9 has become a well-known brand name among Palestinians. Rabinowitz noted:

For Palestinians, the name D-9 has become synonymous with destruction.

The gray, heavily armored machines, which stand as tall as a small house, already have turned hundreds of buildings into dusty rubble heaps and ancient olive groves into wastelands with their powerful shovel blades. Israeli commentator Nahum Barnea has called them "the terrifying beast of this war."

The D-9 gained notoriety in the weeklong battle between soldiers and Palestinian militants in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, one of the fiercest in the past three years. With a deafening roar, the bulldozer plowed through narrow alleys, shearing the fronts off homes, to cut a path for advancing soldiers.

The human rights group Amnesty International says the destruction of homes is a grave violation of international law. However, Amnesty's Israel director, Amnon Vidan, said the group has no opinion on the specific types of vehicles used.

But the new and improved Caterpillar 'dozers are being touted as actually life-saving. (You just cannot make this shit up.)

Here's Rabinowitz again to explain:

Ramadan Nawaf, 52, watched his house and groves of olives and oranges flattened by a D-9 four months ago, during a large-scale army raid of the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. "It was moving like a monster," said Nawaf. "It was very big and destroyed everything in front of it." But developers say the new machine will save lives on both sides, pointing to the case of American peace activist Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Wash., who was crushed to death by a bulldozer—not a D-9—on March 16, [2003] while trying to block a house demolition in the Gaza Strip.

The army said the driver, sitting in the heavily armored cabin, could not see Corrie.

The new D-9 has a wider and better field of vision, with cameras mounted much higher than the driver's cabin, said Technion project developer Shai Hershler.

Well, maybe the Corrie family can help Caterpillar design a better, more efficient 'dozer. Last year, Human Rights Watch detailed the D-9's performance in the destruction of Palestinian homes. And God knows, our own government is being careful in how it destroys other countries's structures:

U.S. Embassy spokesman Paul Patin would not comment on the specific vehicles. He said that when Israel modifies U.S. products, the Pentagon makes sure "they are used in a manner acceptable to our laws."

Caterpillar, for its part, expresses great concern for peace in the Middle East. Rabinowitz noted its comments about the new and improved D-9:

Caterpillar, which produces the bulldozer, said in a statement that it "shares the world's concern over unrest in the Middle East," but that with more then 2 million of its machines in use worldwide, it has "neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of that equipment."

As proof that governments and defense contractors are making progress in refining urban warfare, the story points out:

No D-9 driver has been killed in the last three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, despite operating in densely populated Palestinian cities where they are exposed to sniper fire and bombs.

To prove that I also am concerned, I'm still checking to see whether any Caterpillar bulldozers were hurt during the filming of George of the Jungle 2.

Full disclosure:

I've long hated the Peoria Caterpillars—that is, the basketball team sponsored by the bulldozer company. They played in what was called the National Industrial Basketball League, a high-quality nationwide amateur league of ex-college stars in the '50s that was just one small step below the NBA. NIBL players, especially those from my hometown Phillips 66'ers, dominated the amateur-only U.S. Olympic teams in those days.

As a child growing up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, I was the mascot, towel boy, and ball retriever for opposing teams during Phillips 66'er games, and I regularly went to practices and shot hoops and hung with the likes of 66'er stars Gary Thompson, Clyde Lovellette, and Arnold Short. Hey, I learned to shoot from 66'er Bobby Plump, who made the championship-winning shot for the real-life '54 Milan, Indiana, high-school team immortalized in Hoosiers. (Hell, I knew people who knew James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.)

During warmups at 66'er games, I got to pass balls to (and of course sometimes shoot around with) players like future Knick star Dick Barnett and sit on the bench next to people like legendary coach John McLendon, both of whom were with the Cleveland Pipers. (In 1960, a young shipping magnate named George Steinbrenner purchased the ailing Cleveland franchise and moved the team into the fledging American Basketball League, thus making McLendon the first black professional basketball coach.)

Until the ABL drained talent from and destroyed the high-end amateur league, the Peoria Caterpillars, led by their creepy center B.H. Born, were fierce rivals of the 66'ers.

One more reason I loathe Caterpillars.

Morning Report 3/15/05
The Shots Heard 'Round the World

Posted by Harkavy at 2:48 PM, March 15, 2005

CAN'T WAIT FOR Thursday's testimony by baseball czar Bud Selig before the House Government Reform Committee, whose GOP chair, Tom Davis, continually stifles probes of the Bush regime's Iraq debacle.

Count on Selig to give us the scoop: In one of his side jobs, the former Milwaukee used-car salesman (his daddy's business) is a board member of the biggest producer of kitty litter in the world, Oil-Dri.

Back when the Voice had sports pages, I would occasionally comb through SEC filings to find nasty clumps of Selig's notorious conflicts of interests—he also was a baseball owner appointed by the other owners to be commissioner, but he denied that that was a conflict of interest. Selig is practically a poster boy for corporate America's boardroom shenanigans. As I reported in May 2002:

In 1996, for instance, Selig's car-leasing company got $80,608 from Oil-Dri while Bud was the chairman of Oil-Dri's executive-compensation and stock-option committees. In the 2001 fiscal year, Selig got an "annual retainer" of $10,000 from Oil-Dri, not counting thousands in other fees for chairing the compensation and stock-option committees. He also received an option to purchase 10,000 shares of stock—while he helped decide which company officers also got stock options.

Oil-Dri makes out, too: As a result of a recent deal, it now furnishes the soil additives used to groom the diamonds of several MLB teams, including Selig's Milwaukee Brewers. Conflict of interest? What's that?

Meanwhile, who's sifting through the foul excreta of our Iraq misadventure? One of the best is the ranking Democrat, Henry Waxman, on the very same committee that's getting ready to hold the dog-and-pony D.C. show on steroids.

Waxman's one of the few elected officials of either party on Capitol Hill who's thoroughly probing the Bush regime. And that's a tough job, given the administration's penchant for keeping things secret. That secrecy itself was the subject of a Waxman report. As I noted last September:

The feisty Waxman's Government Reform Committee Minority Office is one congressional operation that's still functioning. Particularly handy, especially now, is Iraq on the Record, a March 2004 catalog of "a searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq" made by Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice.

Talking about another war, Martin Luther King Jr. told us in 1967: "We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now."

And since Congress is still generally silent on the subject of the current war—that legislative branch done fell off that tree—"now" is still now. There's still a fierce urgency, even though most D.C. pols are blind to it.

Except for a few who go out on limbs. Waxman is one of a handful of Democrats (and this doesn't include the party's lame designated hitters, Kerry and Edwards) who churn hard facts into investigative reports. I'll take Waxman's minority reports on the POTUS dickhead any day of the week over the Cruise-Spielberg film version of the short story Minority Report, beloved by Dickheads like myself.

Just for one example, look at the Waxman crew's Iraq Contracting investigations page.

The cruelest joke in this current Congressional obsession with the relatively unimportant steroid controversy is that Waxman and his posse also tried to bring to public attention the idiotic move last year by the House, which governs the politics of the nation's poorest large city—our capital, D.C.—to allow assault weapons in D.C. Read the Waxman riff on that controversy.

On the other hand, what better group than Congress to "investigate" steroid use by baseball players? Only last year, baseball owners endeared themselves to the Run-D.C. crackas by moving a major-league team there. It was a monumental case of corporate welfare—milking D.C.'s poor (who are desperate for housing, food, and reasonable pay for cleaning up after rich people) to pay for a new stadium with luxury boxes that will be flooded with lobbyists and congressmen. Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post did a rip-roaring job on this scam. See my Bush Beat item "Playing Ball in D.C." from last October for details.

On Thursday, Henry Waxman will go along with this p.r. "probe" of steroids; he's a savvy congressman who picks his battles. But don't get distracted. Go to his minority crew's investigations page and fuel your rage the legal way.

You might want to acquaint yourself with the brewing oil-for-slush scandal. As Waxman notes, Congress has not held a single hearing on it.

Morning Report 3/14/05
They're Right. We're Not Evolving

Posted by Harkavy at 9:10 AM, March 14, 2005

FASCINATING ROUNDUP IN this morning's Washington Post about the scope of the anti-evolution movement sweeping across the country. New institutes pushing "intelligent design," new laws branding evolution as "a theory, not a fact." Yet again, America's mullahs are trying to monkey with reality by replacing it with superstition.

Judging by the Contra evolution of our national government (the resurrection of cold warriors John Negroponte and John Bolton, among others), and the steady drumbeat of religious fearmongering in hotel-room churches in suburban Milwaukee and across the U.S., natural selection isn't working. The evidence is in the concurrent stories about Condi Rice even being mentioned as a presidential candidate and about Bible-beaten Terry Ratzmann's horrific murder rampage. See yesterday's Bush Beat item "The Little Church of Horrors" for a photo synthesis of Ratzmann's twin obsessions with carnivorous plants and end-times theology.

The current religious-right wave of anti-science "science"—our own brand of Lysenkoism—is of course spearheaded by the likes of Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. (Come to think of it, the anti-evolutionists may be right in believing that ooze can be something other than primordial.)

It's hard to imagine that there was once a time when Barbara Jordan walked the Earth.

Way back in 1974, during the House Judiciary Committee's deliberations on whether to impeach Richard Nixon, the congresswoman from Texas intoned with all of her considerable powers of oratory:

"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

"If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder."

Too bad she's not around to talk about the new U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, who was an infamous shredder during the Iran-Contra scandal.

Jordan's Watergate-era performance is recalled in a Houston Chronicle obit after her 1996 death.

In another piece, the Chronicle's Alan Bernstein recounts typical Jordan epigrams. She delivered this one at a 1976 citizenship seminar sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention:

It's best if a politician says as little as possible, and then there will not be so much not to believe.

That doesn't mean that Jordan herself kept quiet. She got much flak for telling a group of women political leaders in 1991:

"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it."

Bernstein chronicled the uproar that followed:

The statement led to Jordan being labeled a "sexist bigot" by a national men's group. . . .

Her response: "All I can say is, 'Fellas, get some calluses and let's work together.' "

Jordan was a politician, and a skilled one. But ill health brought an early end to her career: She suffered in private with multiple sclerosis. She also kept private the rest of her personal life. Only after her death did the press out her as a lesbian.

Her brains and voice were formidable. As the Bernstein piece noted:

Sociologist Chandler Davidson of Rice University, himself once a leader in the civil rights movement, recalled two particular things that characterized Jordan's political dealings.

One, he said, was that she was "deeply concerned about justice for minorities. The second was that she understood fully that to achieve that justice it was very important to build coalitions.

"I thought she was extremely effective in bringing around people who originally might have had serious doubts about wanting to help mainstream African-Americans in the political process. After coming in contact with her and seeing her charm, intelligence and seriousness of purpose, they were swept off their feet."

Compared with her, Condi Rice is a lightweight. Not that she's dumb; I'm sure she's smart. But she was merely appointed by the chief monkey. Rice's prime attribute is loyalty to her boss. In that sense, she's more like a secretary of the state.

Barbara Jordan, on the other hand, wasn't afraid to piss off her constituency. And her mettle was tested in the steel-death-cage arena of electoral politics, as a black woman in Texas. In her time, she was the only such creature in the Texas legislature. And she rose to become a national figure. Talk about survival of the fittest.

Lords Have Mercy

Posted by Harkavy at 9:29 PM, March 13, 2005

Well, the House of Lords beat back an attempt by Tony Blair's government to bypass the British courts in detaining terror suspects. That's the way I prefer to look at it, because I have the sorry-ass non-performance of the U.S. Congress as a template on this issue.

Yes, Parliament did finally Blair's new terror laws (sort of a partial version of our own Patriot Acts), but at least it got Blair to agree that it would review them within a year. It's a "sunset clause," no matter how much face Blair saved, and Great Britain's Home Secretary will not have the unilateral power to detain people and ban them from using telephones and computers, as the Blair government originally demanded. So this is at least a partial victory for civil liberties—are you listening, Congress?

In the meantime, a Yank in England writes to defend me against charges from a Canadian reader, Duncan MacKenzie, that I'm ignorant about the British political system (which I am). Kevin McCandless writes:

Hi. Don't feel too bad. I'm an American who lives in London and while I could tell you (just) about the difference between the law lords and the broader House of Lords, it is pretty obscure. A lot of English people don't know the difference either and are about as ignorant of their country as we Americans are about ours. For example, it's a big shock when I tell them that I can visit relatives in Northern Ireland but not leave the United Kingdom.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that being brain-dead is pretty much the universal condition. Hope that helps.

Thanks for writing, Kevin. But it's the continued functioning—or non-functioning—of George W. Bush's brain that really worries me. He's the one who has all the guns and money at his command. Just thinking about that makes my head hurt.

Also regarding the House of Lords' historic battle against Blair's demented and Draconian new laws, Alex Dunn wrote me last Friday afternoon:

Long-time reader, love the site, love the work you do. Wasn't sure if you had heard this or not, but thought I would pass it along. The House of Lords gives in because Blair "promises" chances to amend it later. What kind of bullshit if that?

Thanks for writing, Alex. I appreciate your kind words, and I take your point. But let's be realistic about this. The lords did give in, but they extracted some really important concessions—for instance, Home Secretary Charles Clarke will actually have to ask the courts to issue the orders. Compared with the way our Congress lay down before Bush on the Iraq invasion and before John Ashcroft on the Patriot Acts? No comparison. We need a parliamentary democracy. At least some of these things would be hashed out.

And the link you sent along with your note—to a Reuters story on the U.K. anti-terrorism law—does note that passage came only after "one of the longest parliamentary sittings in British history—a 30-hour marathon which started on Thursday morning and ran all through the night."

Again, I point to our Congress as a frame of reference. With notable exceptions, such as Henry Waxman and Carl Levin and the late Paul Wellstone.

I mean, here we are on the eve of Congressional hearings, supposedly, on steroid use by baseball players. What a dog-and-pony show, if it actually happens. Meanwhile, Congress refuses to hold hearings on the 'roid rage exhibited by the Bush administration toward the rest of the world since 9/11.

The Little Church of Horrors

Posted by Harkavy at 2:03 PM, March 13, 2005

IF THE CURRENT news reports are true, it looks like the suspected gunman in the church massacre in suburban Milwaukee grew carnivorous plants as a hobby. He's described as an avid gardener, press reports say he raised such meat-eating vegetables as Venus flytraps, and I found on the Web what may be Ratzmann's photo (see above) of a carnivorous plant.

But the Living Church of God, the small sect he belonged to, was also one of Terry Ratzmann's passions. Perhaps he was driven past the edge by the right-wing sect's nonstop apocalyptic warnings—a set of scare-tactic teachings similar to those used to great effect by the Bush regime's religious zealots.

Incessant fear-mongering is a proven strategy of evangelists and other politicians. It worked in the last presidential election. As for Terry Ratzmann, who knows what was going on with him? Reports are that he was about to lose his job and that he was upset about a sermon he'd heard a few weeks ago. Well, considering the sermons he got a steady dose of, no wonder he was even more agitated. Yes, yes, he was such a "mellow" fellow, his neighbors recalled. Aren't they always?

The Living Church of God is a splintered offshoot of once-famed radio evangelist Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, a Pasadena, California, empire noted for Plain Truth magazine and "The World Tomorrow!" radio broadcasts warning everyone, in typical '50s fashion, to duck and cover because the end was near. Setting that denomination apart was the avid participation by legendary cartoonist and illustrator Basil Wolverton, a gifted contributor to Mad and other mags and comic books.

Check out the unbeatably weird combo of Wolverton's end-times drawings with Armstrong's exclamatory doomsaying in this 1956 work titled 1975 in Prophecy!, featuring Wolverton's creepy deathscapes juxtaposed with the preacher's equally scary captions:

This scene of utter destruction—the grim, lifeless result of misused human inventions—would take place but for God's promised intervention to save man from this terrifying end.

Take a look at HollywoodJesus.com for Wolverton's apocalyptic drawings in color.

Armstrong's son, the slick and suave Garner Ted Armstrong, later took over the empire, but it fell apart amid accusations of adultery and financial hanky-panky. The Living Church of God was one of a few sects that arose from the ashes of Herbert W. Armstrong's nightmarish vision.

If Terry Ratzmann went bonkers, it's no wonder, considering how much doom and gloom was preached at him—with the typical crapola about how the world is divided into good and evil and how Satan is responsible for bad stuff. Take, for instance, the Living Church of God's commentary after the Columbine massacre a few years ago. The sect's Richard F. Ames wrote:

What prompted these two murderers to violate the common standards of all civilized societies on earth? Was it the violent video games that some have called "murder simulators"? Had the electronic world made killing a reflex action? Was it the lack of parental involvement in their lives? Was it a tolerant world become so indifferent that it ignored the many warning signs of behavior and comments of the killers?

And Ames, of course, provided answers that had nothing to do with the real world and simply stirred up even more fear and helplessness:

My friends, let me tell you why! Certainly there are many contributing factors, but No. 1, contrary to the unreal world of video games, there is a real spirit of murder and evil in the world.

Ever since Cain slew Abel about 6,000 years ago, the nature of hate and murder has characterized much of human history. The Bible reveals the existence of a REAL, UNSEEN EVIL SPIRIT called Satan the Devil. In the gospel of John, Jesus of Nazareth uncovered the Devil's battle plan.

Sounds like mad General Jerry Boykin, the Pentagon Pentecostal. (See my item "The Christocrats" from last September.) Ames ends his screed like this:

The famous 19th century American statesman, Daniel Webster, stated this about the Bible and our national future—listen to this: "If there is anything in my thoughts or style to commend, the credit is due to my parents for instilling in me an early love of the Scriptures. If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity."

How true and how prophetic those words are! That's what's going to happen to all Bible-rejecting peoples, particularly those who claim to be Christian nations. We applaud those teenagers who actively seek to live by the Bible and the commandments of God. But the REAL TRAGEDY is a society that rejects the TEN COMMANDMENTS and rejects the instructions of the Creator God who gave us all the blessings we enjoy in the first place! When our whole society increasingly IGNORES the instructions of the true God, when it continues to embrace the wild, amoral influences of the media, when it fails to seek the way of life as taught in the Bible, we, my friends, will see more and more such tragedies. Perhaps then you will understand the real answer to the question, "WHY?"

Or perhaps you won't.

Anyway, after Saturday's church massacre, the cops had their own battle plan. The New York Times reported that cops and feds "swarmed" the home where Ratzmann, a church member, lived with his mom and sister. The Times story continued:

Neighbors said Mr. Ratzmann was a computer programmer and prolific gardener who mostly kept to himself but dressed in a tie, jacket and dress pants every Saturday for church. "He's a normal Joe, you know, he's the guy that you'd never suspect to have done this," said Shane Colwell, who lives across the alley from the Ratzmanns. "I don't want his mother thinking that she's raised a lunatic that she should have known was going to do this."

Mr. Colwell said that Mr. Ratzmann had built a garage, a greenhouse, and a filtration system that collected rainwater for fish tanks where he raised trout and that he took his Toyota pickup truck on camping trips to "listen to the coyotes under the moonlight," but did not hunt.

"He said he never even shot a thing in his life," Mr. Colwell said. "The guy caught bunny rabbits in a humane trap and drove 20 miles to release them, because he didn't want to kill them."

Uh-huh. Even though he belonged to a religious sect that fervently believed that worldwide carnage was just around the corner.

You'd think that growing carnivorous plants (see photo) would have been enough of an outlet so that he didn't have to shoot anyone. Reports are, however, that he was about to lose his job. Well, in those circumstances, nothing like a gloom-and-doom sermon about the frightening end to all life on Earth to brighten your spirits. Dave Umhoefer of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel gives a flavor of the sect's teachings:

The slayings came on Saturday, the church's day of worship as practiced in the time of the Old Testament. Members, who believe the Bible is the literal word of God, were gathering as they do throughout the country in small groups at rented halls, hotels and other locations.

Members believe that the "Great Tribulation"—war and famine as prophesied in the Bible—is nearing and that Christ will return as "King of kings."

But listen for yourself to Roderick C. Meredith, the head guy of the sect, ordained more than half a century ago by Herbert W. Armstrong himself. Meredith's recent epistolary "Are You PREPARED?"—all the underlines, boldface type, and exclamation points are his—starts this way:

Events prophesied in your Bible are now beginning to occur with increasing frequency. In this Work of the living God, we are able to warn you about what is going to happen soon. 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!

Please understand. We are not "scaremongers." We love our fellow man. So it is our responsibility to warn our peoples—ahead of time—to prepare for the future. Most of our advice is spiritual in nature. However, in this editorial I want to give you some common sense advice involving your physical survival and your financial well-being.

We must always remember the "Big Picture" prophecy of Matthew 24:6-11. Christ explains that there will be smaller wars within "nations" and major conflicts between "kingdoms." He indicates in Luke 21:11 that "fearful sights"—or, as a number of translations have it, "terrors"—will come upon us, as well as truly "great" earthquakes at the time of the end. Concurrently, there will be famine and disease epidemics.

If we are truly Bible-believing Christians, we need to prepare for these situations. We are reminded of the old adage, "God helps those who help themselves!" Many examples indicate that although God will often intervene supernaturally to deliver us, He expects us to use wisdom and do our part to protect ourselves.

Morning Report 3/11/05
Bomber Kills 50 in Mosul, But Who's Counting?

Posted by Harkavy at 10:26 AM, March 11, 2005

Proud as peacocks is the way The Economist imagined U.S. neocons yesterday, saying, "Times are very good for America's least-loved foreign-policy makers."

Unlike the jingoistic U.S. press, the mainstream British mag is realistic, adding, "But their apotheosis may not last."

The neocons' feathers may be a little singed this morning, in the wake of the suicide bombing in Mosul that killed at least 50 mourners at a funeral. As the Sydney Morning Herald notes, with the perspective and detachment that most of the U.S. press can't muster:

The attacks come at a time of political flux, with a lame-duck Iraqi interim government and rising public frustration over protracted negotiations to form a new coalition government nearly six weeks after landmark elections on January 30.

After this morning's Mosul massacre, U.S. Army officials offered estimates of casualties. What a joke. Ever since the unwarranted invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials will gladly talk about the number of people killed by insurgents, but they have steadfastly refused to offer any casualty figures for the number of Iraqis we have killed.

The pressure is growing, however. This morning, the British Medical Journal launched yet another effort to get Western governments to start adding up all the carnage, saying:

An international group of public health experts has called on the U.S. and U.K. governments to commission an independent inquiry into Iraqi war related casualties.

"We believe that the joint U.S.-U.K. failure to make any effort to monitor Iraqi casualties is, from a public health perspective, wholly irresponsible," says the public statement, signed by 23 experts in public health and epidemiology from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Spain, and Australia. "We have waited too long for this information."

Elsewhere in the journal, epidemiologist Klim McPherson notes:

Counting the dead is intrinsic to civilized society. Understanding the causes of death is a core public health responsibility. . . .

This is well recognized, and yet neither the public nor public health professionals are able to obtain reliable and officially endorsed information about the extent of civilian deaths attributable to the allied invasion of Iraq. Estimates vary between tens and hundreds of thousands.

The latter estimate, first forwarded by The Lancet, has been derided, but the fact is that nobody knows. And the death toll is surely in the tens of thousands, most of them civilians, not wild-eyed insurgents, and most of them killed by U.S. bombers and soldiers. McPherson mounts a reasoned case, one that the U.S. press for the most part ignores:

Counting casualties accurately can help to save lives both currently and in the future. Understanding the burden of death, injury, disease, and trauma that the population is currently suffering enables proper planning of war, and health, and in assessing local responses appropriately. In the future this should help government and military planners to assess the likely humanitarian implications of conflict.

But it's hard to remain calm. He adds this:

The plain fact is that an estimate of 100,000 excess deaths attributable to the invasion of Iraq is alarming. This is already half the death toll of Hiroshima. Apart from the practical arguments, the principled ones stand and will always stand.

Have we not learnt any lessons from the history of sweeping alarming numbers of deaths under the carpet? This is not something about which there can be any political discretion 60 years after Auschwitz. The U.K. government, acting on our behalf, ought to offer reasoned criticism of the existing estimates. It should pursue their public health responsibilities to count the casualties by using modern methods. Democracy requires this, as does proper responsibility under the Geneva Conventions.

OK, OK, you've lost us imperial Americans there, pal. The word "Geneva" is pure torture to neocomical figures like Doug Feith and Alberto Gonzales.

Seriously, there are plenty of Iraqi civilians who aren't dead (see photo above). Plenty of them have lived through U.S. missile attacks to tell about it. Here's one account, gleaned by the U.N.'s IRIN news service back in July 2003:

Farmer Hamza Abdullah was driving home in his pickup with three of his children sitting on a load of hay in the back, when they were struck by a missile. "Just as we were getting to my home, I saw the American troops, but I did not take much notice because there was no fighting," he told IRIN. "Suddenly I heard a missile coming straight at us."

His children took the force of the blast. They were rushed to hospital with serious shrapnel wounds and each had one of their legs amputated. Now they are patients at Baghdad's Institute of Medical Technology—the only place in the city where they can be fitted with artificial limbs.

Abdullah's daughter, five-year-old Elaf, sits in the waiting room, the stump of her left leg encased in a bandage. Her 13-year-old sister Sabrina and 10-year-old brother Abbas have already been measured for their new limbs.

But we haven't been able to measure the impact of the U.S. invasion on the Iraqi populace. Iraqi deaths? Iraqi kids' legs blown off? The Bush regime won't even allow coverage of the coffin after coffin of U.S. soldiers arriving at Dover, Delaware. Take a look for yourself, courtesy of the excellent National Security Archive, and read about former CNN journalist Ralph Begleiter's fight for that information (which I wrote about here.

The whiff of "democracy" in the Middle East that's earning such good press for the Bush regime carries the stench of burnt flesh. How much flesh? We still don't know.

Morning Report 3/10/05
Smells Like Bush Team 'Spirit'

Posted by Harkavy at 11:42 AM, March 10, 2005

Before you swallow the hype that there's a "spirit of democracy" wafting across the Middle East and that what's going on in Lebanon is another version of Ukraine's supposed "Orange Revolution," take a look at Meron Benvenisti's analysis in this morning's Haaretz. Sarcastically titled "A Thrilling Epic of Freedom," the piece includes this passage:

The desperate American need to justify the Iraqi war after the fact is causing them and their supporters to inflate every event and to lend it a significance that goes beyond the local, limited context, which usually stems not from lofty principles, but from the interests of local tyrants who want to strengthen their position.

Enthusiasm over the "harbingers of freedom" is particularly strong among right-wing circles in Israel and the United States, who see the spread of democracy as the justification for their old demand that a precondition for any normalization and peace process is a "democratization of the Arabs." In the eyes of the satisfied people of the Western world, political freedom and the institutions of parliamentary democracy are more important than freedom from want and equality of opportunity in the areas of economics, education and health.

Bush's invasion of Iraq has set in motion forces that we can't stop. Hey, not all of the forces are bad, as Der Spiegel's Volker Windfuhr and Bernhard Zand noted Monday in a deep analysis. But the Iraq fiasco makes the Bush regime and its hard-right allies desperate to promote the notion that there's a "spirit of democracy" in the Middle East that mighty America has unleashed, when in fact part of what's being unleashed is both undemocratic and scary. Here's more from Der Spiegel on the serious problem of Syria:

Observers doubt that driving the Damascus regime into a corner will truly improve the situation in the Middle East. Last week Flynt Leverett, a former Middle East expert in the U.S. government's National Security Council, warned not to "rush things with Syria." Leverett believes that using the exuberance of Lebanon's democratic spring to achieve the "maximum goal"—of deposing Bashar al-Assad—would be dangerous. He believes that "the most likely outcome would be chaos in Syria, and the political order following this chaos would be of a heavily Islamist nature." An overly hasty withdrawal by the Syrians would also leave behind an unwanted vacuum in southern Lebanon—namely a leaderless Shiite Hezbollah party. Hezbollah, well-integrated politically and supported by Syria until now, could then turn to an increasingly radical Iran for support—an outcome even Israel's national security advisor, Giora Eiland, has warned against.

Meanwhile, the simplistic Bush regime crows about "democracy." Just remember that the Bushites tried to impose on Iraq the kind of "democracy" that dismantled that country's police force and army, shut down newspapers that were critical of the U.S. occupation, and, for plunder's sake, tried to privatize the entire economy at once.

In Lebanon, on the other hand, there's a genuine coalition of people tired of living under Syria's yoke, and the latest news—the apparent re-establishment of a pro-Syrian government—is likely to inflame them further. Bush seems to say he supports "democracy" there. But it's not the kind he and his handlers want.

Evidence of that is Bush's extremely strange semi-endorsement of a role for Hezbollah in a new version of Lebanon. (See Steve Weisman's story in this morning's New York Times.) The neocons in the Bush administration consider Hezbollah as nothing more than a terrorist outfit. Israel's hard-right government is likely freaking out. But for now, at least, the Bush regime has to kind of go along with support of Hezbollah. That won't last long.

And don't kid yourself that just because thousands of Lebanese detest the Syrian presence they automatically embrace the Bush regime's Israel-loving neocons. Read Jihad Al Khazen's analysis yesterday in Beirut's Dar Al-Hayat, comparing coverage of "foreign fighters" in Iraq from the Weekly Standard and The Nation. If the likes of Jerry Bremer had their way of "spreading democracy" in Lebanon, Dar Al-Hayat would be shut down.

The Iraq debacle can teach us many lessons, whether the Bush regime pays any attention to them or not. One of the key documents—worth re-reading—in the history of our unjustified invasion is the International Crisis Group's Reconstructing Iraq, which I wrote about last September.

That's an analysis of the strange "democracy" that the Bush regime's Medal of Freedom winner Bremer tried to impose during his suzerainty—during which time we basically spent zero on health care and oil-rich Iraq had to import gasoline.

We hear propaganda to the contrary, of course. Nothing, however, is stranger (in a funny way) than the persistence of this counter-propaganda prank: Type "miserable failure" (with the quotation marks) into Google and you still get, at the top of the list of 157,000 hits, the official White House biography of George W. Bush. (Right-wingers have tried to counter this: Jimmy Carter is second, and Michael Moore is third. But Bush is still No. 1.)

This Google-bombing of Bush was first noted way back in December 2003, but it still works. Now that is a miracle of the spirit of democracy.