Thursday, September 30, 2004
The Lone Star Iconoclast, the local newspaper in Crawford, Texas (Pres. Bush's hometown) has come out in support of...JOHN KERRY.
Kerry Will Restore American Dignity2004
Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement
Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:
• Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.
• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
• Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.
These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.
The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.
Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.
Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.
President Bush has announced plans to change the Social Security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.
The Social Security Trust Fund actually lends money to the rest of the government in exchange for government bonds, which is how the system must work by law, but how do you later repay Social Security while you are running a huge deficit? It’s impossible, without raising taxes sometime in the future or becoming fiscally responsible now. Social Security money is being used to escalate our deficit and, at the same time, mask a much larger government deficit, instead of paying down the national debt, which would be a proper use, to guarantee a future gain.
Privatization is problematic in that it would subject Social Security to the ups, downs, and outright crashes of the Stock Market. It would take millions in brokerage fees and commissions out of the system, and, unless we have assurance that the Ivan Boeskys and Ken Lays of the world will be caught and punished as a deterrent, subject both the Market and the Social Security Fund to fraud and market manipulation, not to mention devastate and ruin multitudes of American families that would find their lives lost to starvation, shame, and isolation.
Kerry wants to keep Social Security, which each of us already owns. He says that the program is manageable, since it is projected to be solvent through 2042, with use of its trust funds. This would give ample time to strengthen the economy, reduce the budget deficit the Bush administration has created, and, therefore, bolster the program as needed to fit ever-changing demographics.
Our senior citizens depend upon Social Security. Bush’s answer is radical and uncalled for, and would result in chaos as Americans have never experienced. Do we really want to risk the future of Social Security on Bush by spinning the wheel of uncertainty?
In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush’s lead through any travail.
He let us down.
When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.
He did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides. He merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.
Rather than using the billions of dollars expended on the invasion of Iraq to shore up our boundaries and go after Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Arabian terrorists, the funds were used to initiate a war with what Bush called a more immediate menace, Saddam Hussein, in oil-rich Iraq. After all, Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.
The Iconoclast, the President’s hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper’s publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Again, he let us down.We presumed the President had solid proof of the existence of these weapons, what and where they were, even as the search continued. Otherwise, our troops would be in much greater danger and the premise for a hurried-up invasion would be moot, allowing more time to solicit assistance from our allies.
Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda.
Now he argues unconvincingly that Iraq was providing safe harbor to terrorists, his new key justification for the invasion. It is like arguing that America provided safe harbor to terrorists leading to 9/11.
Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.
We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a “wartime president.” America is in service 365 days a year. We don’t need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don’t get done.
What has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of Iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a White House intern’s dress. America’s reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.
Iraq is now a quagmire: no WMDs, no substantive link between Saddam and Osama, and no workable plan for the withdrawal of our troops. We are asked to go along on faith. But remember, blind patriotism can be a dangerous thing and “spin” will not bring back to life a dead soldier; certainly not a thousand of them.
Kerry has remained true to his vote granting the President the authority to use the threat of war to intimidate Saddam Hussein into allowing weapons inspections. He believes President Bush rushed into war before the inspectors finished their jobs.
Kerry also voted against President Bush’s $87 billion for troop funding because the bill promoted poor policy in Iraq, privileged Halliburton and other corporate friends of the Bush administration to profiteer from the war, and forced debt upon future generations of Americans.
Kerry’s four-point plan for Iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. With the help from our European and Middle Eastern allies, his plan is to train Iraqi security forces, involve Iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive Iraq’s multi-billion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with Iraq’s neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq’s borders and non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.
The publishers of the Iconoclast differ with Bush on other issues, including the denial of stem cell research, shortchanging veterans’ entitlements, cutting school programs and grants, dictating what our children learn through a thought-controlling “test” from Washington rather than allowing local school boards and parents to decide how young people should be taught, ignoring the environment, and creating extraneous language in the Patriot Act that removes some of the very freedoms that our founding fathers and generations of soldiers fought so hard to preserve.
We are concerned about the vast exportation of jobs to other countries, due in large part to policies carried out by Bush appointees. Funds previously geared at retention of small companies are being given to larger concerns, such as Halliburton — companies with strong ties to oil and gas. Job training has been cut every year that Bush has resided at the White House.
Then there is his resolve to inadequately finance Homeland Security and to cut the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS) by 94 percent, to reduce money for rural development, to slash appropriations for the Small Business Administration, and to under-fund veterans’ programs.
Likewise troubling is that President Bush fought against the creation of the 9/11 Commission and is yet to embrace its recommendations.
Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton has been awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without undergoing any meaningful bid process — an enormous conflict of interest — plus the company has been significantly raiding the funds of Export-Import Bank of America, reducing investment that could have gone toward small business trade.
When examined based on all the facts, Kerry’s voting record is enviable and echoes that of many Bush allies who are aghast at how the Bush administration has destroyed the American economy. Compared to Bush on economic issues, Kerry would be an arch-conservative, providing for Americans first. He has what it takes to right our wronged economy.
The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.
John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.
Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.
That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.
The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.
Kerry Will Restore American Dignity2004
Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement
Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:
• Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.
• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
• Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.
These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.
The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.
Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.
Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.
President Bush has announced plans to change the Social Security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.
The Social Security Trust Fund actually lends money to the rest of the government in exchange for government bonds, which is how the system must work by law, but how do you later repay Social Security while you are running a huge deficit? It’s impossible, without raising taxes sometime in the future or becoming fiscally responsible now. Social Security money is being used to escalate our deficit and, at the same time, mask a much larger government deficit, instead of paying down the national debt, which would be a proper use, to guarantee a future gain.
Privatization is problematic in that it would subject Social Security to the ups, downs, and outright crashes of the Stock Market. It would take millions in brokerage fees and commissions out of the system, and, unless we have assurance that the Ivan Boeskys and Ken Lays of the world will be caught and punished as a deterrent, subject both the Market and the Social Security Fund to fraud and market manipulation, not to mention devastate and ruin multitudes of American families that would find their lives lost to starvation, shame, and isolation.
Kerry wants to keep Social Security, which each of us already owns. He says that the program is manageable, since it is projected to be solvent through 2042, with use of its trust funds. This would give ample time to strengthen the economy, reduce the budget deficit the Bush administration has created, and, therefore, bolster the program as needed to fit ever-changing demographics.
Our senior citizens depend upon Social Security. Bush’s answer is radical and uncalled for, and would result in chaos as Americans have never experienced. Do we really want to risk the future of Social Security on Bush by spinning the wheel of uncertainty?
In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush’s lead through any travail.
He let us down.
When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.
He did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides. He merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.
Rather than using the billions of dollars expended on the invasion of Iraq to shore up our boundaries and go after Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Arabian terrorists, the funds were used to initiate a war with what Bush called a more immediate menace, Saddam Hussein, in oil-rich Iraq. After all, Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.
The Iconoclast, the President’s hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper’s publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Again, he let us down.We presumed the President had solid proof of the existence of these weapons, what and where they were, even as the search continued. Otherwise, our troops would be in much greater danger and the premise for a hurried-up invasion would be moot, allowing more time to solicit assistance from our allies.
Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda.
Now he argues unconvincingly that Iraq was providing safe harbor to terrorists, his new key justification for the invasion. It is like arguing that America provided safe harbor to terrorists leading to 9/11.
Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.
We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a “wartime president.” America is in service 365 days a year. We don’t need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don’t get done.
What has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of Iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a White House intern’s dress. America’s reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.
Iraq is now a quagmire: no WMDs, no substantive link between Saddam and Osama, and no workable plan for the withdrawal of our troops. We are asked to go along on faith. But remember, blind patriotism can be a dangerous thing and “spin” will not bring back to life a dead soldier; certainly not a thousand of them.
Kerry has remained true to his vote granting the President the authority to use the threat of war to intimidate Saddam Hussein into allowing weapons inspections. He believes President Bush rushed into war before the inspectors finished their jobs.
Kerry also voted against President Bush’s $87 billion for troop funding because the bill promoted poor policy in Iraq, privileged Halliburton and other corporate friends of the Bush administration to profiteer from the war, and forced debt upon future generations of Americans.
Kerry’s four-point plan for Iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. With the help from our European and Middle Eastern allies, his plan is to train Iraqi security forces, involve Iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive Iraq’s multi-billion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with Iraq’s neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq’s borders and non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.
The publishers of the Iconoclast differ with Bush on other issues, including the denial of stem cell research, shortchanging veterans’ entitlements, cutting school programs and grants, dictating what our children learn through a thought-controlling “test” from Washington rather than allowing local school boards and parents to decide how young people should be taught, ignoring the environment, and creating extraneous language in the Patriot Act that removes some of the very freedoms that our founding fathers and generations of soldiers fought so hard to preserve.
We are concerned about the vast exportation of jobs to other countries, due in large part to policies carried out by Bush appointees. Funds previously geared at retention of small companies are being given to larger concerns, such as Halliburton — companies with strong ties to oil and gas. Job training has been cut every year that Bush has resided at the White House.
Then there is his resolve to inadequately finance Homeland Security and to cut the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS) by 94 percent, to reduce money for rural development, to slash appropriations for the Small Business Administration, and to under-fund veterans’ programs.
Likewise troubling is that President Bush fought against the creation of the 9/11 Commission and is yet to embrace its recommendations.
Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton has been awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without undergoing any meaningful bid process — an enormous conflict of interest — plus the company has been significantly raiding the funds of Export-Import Bank of America, reducing investment that could have gone toward small business trade.
When examined based on all the facts, Kerry’s voting record is enviable and echoes that of many Bush allies who are aghast at how the Bush administration has destroyed the American economy. Compared to Bush on economic issues, Kerry would be an arch-conservative, providing for Americans first. He has what it takes to right our wronged economy.
The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.
John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.
Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.
That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.
The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
I am predicting that this upcoming presidential debate will be the most watched in history. Here are some thoughts on it from US News & World Report:
The great Iraq debate
Tue Sep 28
By Kevin Whitelaw
For a supposedly impromptu debate, this one has already been almost totally scripted. The two sides have dickered over just about everything--a rule preventing candidates from quizzing each other directly, the height of the podiums, you name it. When President Bush and Sen. John Kerry walk onto the stage at the University of Miami in Coral Gables on Thursday, they will even know what kind of pen and notepad they can use. The scripted cordiality even extends as far as the opening-bell handshake. All that's left is what the two men will actually say.
The one thing that's certain is that the subject of Iraq will be front and center. It has been several decades, really going back to Vietnam, since world affairs cast such a long shadow over an American election--and much, much longer since a formal debate on foreign policy has been such a pivotal event in the race for the White House. After months of shadow boxing, the stakes are especially high for Kerry. The debates could well be his best--and perhaps final--chance to reverse his weeks-long slide in the polls.
But the volatility in Iraq makes the issue a gamble for both candidates. The beheadings of two American contractors last week by the most wanted men in Iraq (story, Page 30) were a grisly reminder of the potential for an October surprise that could yet sway this election--in either direction. For Bush, the run-up to the debate was a chance to claim some of the perks of incumbency, starting with his address before the United Nations General Assembly. His appearance afterward in the Rose Garden alongside an Iraqi prime minister who paid homage to his administration was a welcome coda. "I thank you, Mr. President, for your determination to stand firm with us in Iraq," Ayad Allawi told a joint press conference. At the same time, the surging violence in Iraq's festering insurgency has only sharpened Kerry's attack. Accusing Bush of "lecturing" rather than leading at the United Nations, Kerry charged that Bush is living in "fantasyland" and "does not have the credibility to lead the world."
Defining the war.
Pivotal, perhaps, will be whether voters believe Bush's contention that Iraq is "central" to the war on terrorism or Kerry's case that it has been a "profound diversion" from the pursuit of Osama bin Laden. "The two sides are taking diametrically opposed views of where we're at and where we're headed," says Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University. "The issue is starting to revolve around which team has the better chance of getting a reasonable outcome." Kerry has developed a detailed critique of Bush's handling of the postwar period that runs from failing to send enough troops to prevent looting to failing to plan for the complex reconstruction in the aftermath. His bottom line: "We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure." Which, in turn, has given Bush an opening to accuse Kerry repeatedly (if inaccurately) of believing "America would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power."
Their views on what to do next in Iraq are not wildly divergent, although Kerry insists that he would be more successful enlisting the support of now reluctant allies. But rather than focus on the minutiae of policy, the candidates are likely to use Iraq as the main battlefield to confront their media-generated images--Kerry as a flip-flopper and Bush as an unwavering (although perhaps too stubbornly so) leader. "The administration wants to turn anything Kerry says about Iraq into talking about John Kerry's inconsistencies," says James Lindsay, a vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations. "What Kerry will want to say is what the president is doing is not courageous conviction, but tremendous incompetence."
The reality is obviously more complex. While Kerry famously equivocated in explaining his vote for the Iraq war and against the $87 billion aid package, he has actually been quite consistent in his vision of postwar Iraq. His calls for turning power over to Iraqis and building up Iraqi security forces predated Bush's formal endorsement of those strategies. Bush, meanwhile, has changed course on Iraq several times, adjusting to political realities, for example, by reversing his opposition to an interim government.
Kerry does run some risks trying to attack Bush's Iraq policy while the bullets are flying--and U.S. soldiers are dying. Already, the Bush team has implicitly challenged Kerry's patriotism. "You can embolden an enemy by sending mixed messages," Bush warned. As Boston University foreign policy Prof. Andrew Bacevich describes it, "Kerry has the tough task of distancing himself from the president's policies without opening himself to the charges of being a [George] McGovern," the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate who lost after being tarred as defeatist and out of the mainstream.
The essence of the Iraq debate is really who will better defend the nation from terrorists. Bush begins with the advantage of being able to claim tangible progress, such as killing or capturing nearly three quarters of al Qaeda's top leadership and ousting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Kerry is trying to broaden the debate by arguing that Bush's Iraq war has actually been a setback in the larger battle against Islamic extremists. "At this point in time, the president's behavior in Iraq is creating a reinforcement of the image that al Qaeda is seeking to portray to the world that the West and the United States in particular are intent on crushing Islam," says Kerry's national security adviser, Rand Beers. "What Kerry would seek to do is remove George Bush as the image of America and seek to reverse that general opinion." The main ammunition for this argument would be global opinion polls, which show an alarming surge in antipathy toward the United States, especially in the Muslim world. "The reputation of the United States has never been lower," says University of Virginia history Prof. Melvyn Leffler.
Below the surface, there are actually many similarities in the candidates' worldviews. "Kerry and Bush really buy into a larger consensus about what America's role in the world should be and what the implication and meaning of 9/11 was," says Bacevich. It quickly becomes less of a debate about where America should go than how it should get there. "Bush in all his comments projects total confidence in the utility of American power, in the goodness of American power, and the virtues of the American people," says Lindsay. "With Senator Kerry, he can be seen projecting far less confidence about how beloved we are in the world, more skepticism about how others see us, and more sensitivity about the limits of American power."
In practice, this comes down to a debate about America's traditional alliances and Bush's practice of assembling "coalitions of the willing." "This president recognizes that as different problems come forward, they will require different groups of countries to deal with them," says Richard Falkenrath, a former Bush aide now at the Brookings Institution. Kerry, meanwhile, says that relations with allies need urgent repair: "We are weaker when we fight almost alone."
In many ways, there is a strange reversal of historic roles. Kerry (the Democrat) is promoting himself as the realist, while Bush (the Republican), with his proselytizing talk of spreading democracy, comes across as more the idealist along the lines of Woodrow Wilson. Richard Holbrooke, a top Kerry adviser on foreign policy, faults Bush administration officials for articulating a "sloppy neo-Wilsonianism" in which "they talk about democracy, but none of their policies advance it--not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Liberia." Yet Bush can, and does, point to accomplishments like an upcoming election in Afghanistan and plans for voting in Iraq.
True or false?
Much of this will come down to whether Kerry's new assault on Bush's credibility can be successful. The two candidates will trade competing facts, but the truth will very likely be quite elusive for viewers. Take, for example, the spat that broke out last week over the number of Iraqi police and soldiers. Months ago, the Bush administration was boasting about more than 200,000 Iraqi security forces, while more recently, Bush has talked about nearly 100,000 soldiers. Kerry puts the number of deployable soldiers at 5,000 and says that no police officers are fully trained. As is often the case with statistics, it all depends on definition. The early training for Iraqi forces was so spotty that Washington was forced to start the count at zero a few months ago. The Pentagon says it has nearly 39,000 police who have completed a multiweek training course and who are on duty in a probationary status. Few, if any, though, have completed the mandatory half-year mentoring program.
That kind of complexity is almost certain to get lost in a 90-minute debate, but America will still be listening.
The great Iraq debate
Tue Sep 28
By Kevin Whitelaw
For a supposedly impromptu debate, this one has already been almost totally scripted. The two sides have dickered over just about everything--a rule preventing candidates from quizzing each other directly, the height of the podiums, you name it. When President Bush and Sen. John Kerry walk onto the stage at the University of Miami in Coral Gables on Thursday, they will even know what kind of pen and notepad they can use. The scripted cordiality even extends as far as the opening-bell handshake. All that's left is what the two men will actually say.
The one thing that's certain is that the subject of Iraq will be front and center. It has been several decades, really going back to Vietnam, since world affairs cast such a long shadow over an American election--and much, much longer since a formal debate on foreign policy has been such a pivotal event in the race for the White House. After months of shadow boxing, the stakes are especially high for Kerry. The debates could well be his best--and perhaps final--chance to reverse his weeks-long slide in the polls.
But the volatility in Iraq makes the issue a gamble for both candidates. The beheadings of two American contractors last week by the most wanted men in Iraq (story, Page 30) were a grisly reminder of the potential for an October surprise that could yet sway this election--in either direction. For Bush, the run-up to the debate was a chance to claim some of the perks of incumbency, starting with his address before the United Nations General Assembly. His appearance afterward in the Rose Garden alongside an Iraqi prime minister who paid homage to his administration was a welcome coda. "I thank you, Mr. President, for your determination to stand firm with us in Iraq," Ayad Allawi told a joint press conference. At the same time, the surging violence in Iraq's festering insurgency has only sharpened Kerry's attack. Accusing Bush of "lecturing" rather than leading at the United Nations, Kerry charged that Bush is living in "fantasyland" and "does not have the credibility to lead the world."
Defining the war.
Pivotal, perhaps, will be whether voters believe Bush's contention that Iraq is "central" to the war on terrorism or Kerry's case that it has been a "profound diversion" from the pursuit of Osama bin Laden. "The two sides are taking diametrically opposed views of where we're at and where we're headed," says Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University. "The issue is starting to revolve around which team has the better chance of getting a reasonable outcome." Kerry has developed a detailed critique of Bush's handling of the postwar period that runs from failing to send enough troops to prevent looting to failing to plan for the complex reconstruction in the aftermath. His bottom line: "We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure." Which, in turn, has given Bush an opening to accuse Kerry repeatedly (if inaccurately) of believing "America would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power."
Their views on what to do next in Iraq are not wildly divergent, although Kerry insists that he would be more successful enlisting the support of now reluctant allies. But rather than focus on the minutiae of policy, the candidates are likely to use Iraq as the main battlefield to confront their media-generated images--Kerry as a flip-flopper and Bush as an unwavering (although perhaps too stubbornly so) leader. "The administration wants to turn anything Kerry says about Iraq into talking about John Kerry's inconsistencies," says James Lindsay, a vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations. "What Kerry will want to say is what the president is doing is not courageous conviction, but tremendous incompetence."
The reality is obviously more complex. While Kerry famously equivocated in explaining his vote for the Iraq war and against the $87 billion aid package, he has actually been quite consistent in his vision of postwar Iraq. His calls for turning power over to Iraqis and building up Iraqi security forces predated Bush's formal endorsement of those strategies. Bush, meanwhile, has changed course on Iraq several times, adjusting to political realities, for example, by reversing his opposition to an interim government.
Kerry does run some risks trying to attack Bush's Iraq policy while the bullets are flying--and U.S. soldiers are dying. Already, the Bush team has implicitly challenged Kerry's patriotism. "You can embolden an enemy by sending mixed messages," Bush warned. As Boston University foreign policy Prof. Andrew Bacevich describes it, "Kerry has the tough task of distancing himself from the president's policies without opening himself to the charges of being a [George] McGovern," the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate who lost after being tarred as defeatist and out of the mainstream.
The essence of the Iraq debate is really who will better defend the nation from terrorists. Bush begins with the advantage of being able to claim tangible progress, such as killing or capturing nearly three quarters of al Qaeda's top leadership and ousting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Kerry is trying to broaden the debate by arguing that Bush's Iraq war has actually been a setback in the larger battle against Islamic extremists. "At this point in time, the president's behavior in Iraq is creating a reinforcement of the image that al Qaeda is seeking to portray to the world that the West and the United States in particular are intent on crushing Islam," says Kerry's national security adviser, Rand Beers. "What Kerry would seek to do is remove George Bush as the image of America and seek to reverse that general opinion." The main ammunition for this argument would be global opinion polls, which show an alarming surge in antipathy toward the United States, especially in the Muslim world. "The reputation of the United States has never been lower," says University of Virginia history Prof. Melvyn Leffler.
Below the surface, there are actually many similarities in the candidates' worldviews. "Kerry and Bush really buy into a larger consensus about what America's role in the world should be and what the implication and meaning of 9/11 was," says Bacevich. It quickly becomes less of a debate about where America should go than how it should get there. "Bush in all his comments projects total confidence in the utility of American power, in the goodness of American power, and the virtues of the American people," says Lindsay. "With Senator Kerry, he can be seen projecting far less confidence about how beloved we are in the world, more skepticism about how others see us, and more sensitivity about the limits of American power."
In practice, this comes down to a debate about America's traditional alliances and Bush's practice of assembling "coalitions of the willing." "This president recognizes that as different problems come forward, they will require different groups of countries to deal with them," says Richard Falkenrath, a former Bush aide now at the Brookings Institution. Kerry, meanwhile, says that relations with allies need urgent repair: "We are weaker when we fight almost alone."
In many ways, there is a strange reversal of historic roles. Kerry (the Democrat) is promoting himself as the realist, while Bush (the Republican), with his proselytizing talk of spreading democracy, comes across as more the idealist along the lines of Woodrow Wilson. Richard Holbrooke, a top Kerry adviser on foreign policy, faults Bush administration officials for articulating a "sloppy neo-Wilsonianism" in which "they talk about democracy, but none of their policies advance it--not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Liberia." Yet Bush can, and does, point to accomplishments like an upcoming election in Afghanistan and plans for voting in Iraq.
True or false?
Much of this will come down to whether Kerry's new assault on Bush's credibility can be successful. The two candidates will trade competing facts, but the truth will very likely be quite elusive for viewers. Take, for example, the spat that broke out last week over the number of Iraqi police and soldiers. Months ago, the Bush administration was boasting about more than 200,000 Iraqi security forces, while more recently, Bush has talked about nearly 100,000 soldiers. Kerry puts the number of deployable soldiers at 5,000 and says that no police officers are fully trained. As is often the case with statistics, it all depends on definition. The early training for Iraqi forces was so spotty that Washington was forced to start the count at zero a few months ago. The Pentagon says it has nearly 39,000 police who have completed a multiweek training course and who are on duty in a probationary status. Few, if any, though, have completed the mandatory half-year mentoring program.
That kind of complexity is almost certain to get lost in a 90-minute debate, but America will still be listening.
Monday, September 27, 2004
An opinion piece:
Bush's America asks: Why us?
By Imad Khadduri
Monday 27 September 2004, 3:03 Makka Time, 0:03 GMT
As the US presidential elections approach, the American public is facing an important challenge and responsibility as it is confronted by the spectre of a dangerous potential outcome of a second Bush term.
President Bush's public pronouncements and stated efforts to build democracy in Iraq (after failed weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida accusations) are underpinned by a misguided view of America's own democracy. He [Bush] believes that American democracy works because Americans are innately good people, believing in values of tolerance and respect for others and guided by religious faith.The Bush doctrine also equates security at home with the spread of freedom and democracy at the point of a gun elsewhere in the world."I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century," Bush told the nation in accepting his party's presidential nomination on 2 September.
"I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in silence for their liberty. I believe that given the chance, they will embrace the most honourable form of government ever devised by man. I believe all these things because freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world."
"He [Bush] believes that American democracy works because Americans are innately good people, believing in values of tolerance and respect for others and guided by religious faith"
This president believes that he was placed in the White House by a higher power in order to win the war on terrorism, the pivotal struggle of our time. It is this, more than anything, that divides America, stretches its military, bleeds its federal coffers and has led to the occupation of two states, and the deaths of tens of thousands of humans.
If, in the president's view, the goodness of Americans and the nobility of their mission are self-evident, then the failure of peoples around the world to see the resistance against the occupation in Iraq in the same way, means that they are "enemies of freedom". Fighters opposing American power, even if they are residents of the occupied country, do not merit the protections of international law, while 20,000 mercenaries in "sovereign" Iraq are still beyond any law.
Institutional restraints on the exercise of power by Americans in detention centres and prisons can, in this view, safely be relaxed. Moreover, constitutional protections can be denied even to American citizens, arrested in the United States, when they are suspected of being "enemy combatants."
In an article by Robert O Keohane and Annie-Marie Slaughter in the IHT on 23 June 2003 titled "Bush's mistaken view of US Democracy", the democratic challenge is stark: "Behind the debate about the conduct of the war in Iraq, and the occupation, is a larger divide - between those Americans who believe that their unique virtues should permit them to act above the law, and those who believe that people in authority, necessarily imperfect, must be constrained by institutions and by law. Those who understand and believe in the theory of the American Constitution should reject the Bush administration's political theory of personal good and evil. We must continue to insist that the United States is a "government of laws and not of men".
In a recently published book, "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency", the senior senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, perceives so grave a threat to constitutional government that he proclaims: "Never, in my view, had America been led by such a dangerous head of state." Byrd quotes the advice of Herman Goering to rulers who seek to enhance their power: "Whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship ... all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
The American Constitution established a system of checks and balances, by which Congress, the president and the courts each check each other, as do the states and the federal government, to ensure that the power of the government is both limited and controlled. These are not simply theoretical differences about the core of American democracy.
The stage has been reached when they have profound implications for the American people as their bewildered and anxious question is asked: Why us?
A valid response is: Is the public in the US responsible for the actions of its government? In an article "Fewer Americans choosing to vote" by Ben Duncan on 31 August 2004 on Aljazeera.net, he notes: "Although the United States often bills itself as the world's greatest democracy, voter turnout has consistently fallen through the years and nearly half of the American electorate chose not to vote in the 2000 presidential election as more Americans have disengaged from the political process.
What is unfolding in front of the American voters, with the alarming increase in dissonance between rhetoric and reality, is the litmus test for American democracy and how the Americans think about and control the role of the United States in the world.
It is a heavy responsibility, with corresponding consequences.
[Imad Khadduri has an MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission for 30 years (1968-1998). He left Iraq in late 1998. He now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada]
Bush's America asks: Why us?
By Imad Khadduri
Monday 27 September 2004, 3:03 Makka Time, 0:03 GMT
As the US presidential elections approach, the American public is facing an important challenge and responsibility as it is confronted by the spectre of a dangerous potential outcome of a second Bush term.
President Bush's public pronouncements and stated efforts to build democracy in Iraq (after failed weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida accusations) are underpinned by a misguided view of America's own democracy. He [Bush] believes that American democracy works because Americans are innately good people, believing in values of tolerance and respect for others and guided by religious faith.The Bush doctrine also equates security at home with the spread of freedom and democracy at the point of a gun elsewhere in the world."I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century," Bush told the nation in accepting his party's presidential nomination on 2 September.
"I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in silence for their liberty. I believe that given the chance, they will embrace the most honourable form of government ever devised by man. I believe all these things because freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world."
"He [Bush] believes that American democracy works because Americans are innately good people, believing in values of tolerance and respect for others and guided by religious faith"
This president believes that he was placed in the White House by a higher power in order to win the war on terrorism, the pivotal struggle of our time. It is this, more than anything, that divides America, stretches its military, bleeds its federal coffers and has led to the occupation of two states, and the deaths of tens of thousands of humans.
If, in the president's view, the goodness of Americans and the nobility of their mission are self-evident, then the failure of peoples around the world to see the resistance against the occupation in Iraq in the same way, means that they are "enemies of freedom". Fighters opposing American power, even if they are residents of the occupied country, do not merit the protections of international law, while 20,000 mercenaries in "sovereign" Iraq are still beyond any law.
Institutional restraints on the exercise of power by Americans in detention centres and prisons can, in this view, safely be relaxed. Moreover, constitutional protections can be denied even to American citizens, arrested in the United States, when they are suspected of being "enemy combatants."
In an article by Robert O Keohane and Annie-Marie Slaughter in the IHT on 23 June 2003 titled "Bush's mistaken view of US Democracy", the democratic challenge is stark: "Behind the debate about the conduct of the war in Iraq, and the occupation, is a larger divide - between those Americans who believe that their unique virtues should permit them to act above the law, and those who believe that people in authority, necessarily imperfect, must be constrained by institutions and by law. Those who understand and believe in the theory of the American Constitution should reject the Bush administration's political theory of personal good and evil. We must continue to insist that the United States is a "government of laws and not of men".
In a recently published book, "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency", the senior senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, perceives so grave a threat to constitutional government that he proclaims: "Never, in my view, had America been led by such a dangerous head of state." Byrd quotes the advice of Herman Goering to rulers who seek to enhance their power: "Whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship ... all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
The American Constitution established a system of checks and balances, by which Congress, the president and the courts each check each other, as do the states and the federal government, to ensure that the power of the government is both limited and controlled. These are not simply theoretical differences about the core of American democracy.
The stage has been reached when they have profound implications for the American people as their bewildered and anxious question is asked: Why us?
A valid response is: Is the public in the US responsible for the actions of its government? In an article "Fewer Americans choosing to vote" by Ben Duncan on 31 August 2004 on Aljazeera.net, he notes: "Although the United States often bills itself as the world's greatest democracy, voter turnout has consistently fallen through the years and nearly half of the American electorate chose not to vote in the 2000 presidential election as more Americans have disengaged from the political process.
What is unfolding in front of the American voters, with the alarming increase in dissonance between rhetoric and reality, is the litmus test for American democracy and how the Americans think about and control the role of the United States in the world.
It is a heavy responsibility, with corresponding consequences.
[Imad Khadduri has an MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission for 30 years (1968-1998). He left Iraq in late 1998. He now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada]
Friday, September 24, 2004
This is a interesting...a small bit of dissent?
U.S. Officials Differ on Iraqi Elections
By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Top U.S. officials differed Friday over key details of planned Iraqi elections in January, including the unresolved issue of whether all Iraqis will be able to vote and who will protect them from their country's worsening violence.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Congress the elections must be held throughout the country, including areas gripped by violence. That contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said Thursday and again Friday that if insurgents prevent Iraqis from voting in some areas, a partial vote would be better than none at all.
Asked about Rumsfeld's comment, Armitage told a House Appropriations panel, "We're going to have an election that is free and open, and that has to be open to all citizens." Asked after the hearing if partial elections were being considered, he said: "No. Not now. Not that I know of."
Among areas of increasing bloodshed in Iraq are some where U.S.-led coalition forces don't go because they are partly or wholly controlled by insurgents.
Defense officials have put off trying to rout insurgents from those places, including the city of Fallujah, until Iraqi forces now in training are strong enough to hold any area once it is retaken, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said recently.
The interim Iraqi government, meanwhile, has been talking with tribal elders to negotiate a deal to end the insurgents' hold in some places.
Some lawmakers, meanwhile, fear more American troops may have to go to Iraq to help in elections. Gen. John Abizaid, commander of troops in the region, said this week he couldn't discount the possibility, though he said believes Iraqi and possibly international troops could handle the job.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., told Armitage that a plan relying on having sufficient Iraqis trained in time was "astoundingly optimistic." If Americans are to bear the extra burden — as they have been forced to stay in Iraq on extended deployments — then the American people should be told now, and not given the news "on the installment plan," Obey said.
But Army officials said Friday it is likely that during the elections, the U.S. military will have extra troops in the country anyway. The Army is rotating fresh troops into Iraq this fall and winter to replace those whose one-year tours are ending, and it expects to have an overlap of 10,000 to 15,000 extra U.S. soldiers in January when the 3rd Infantry Division's four brigades arrive to replace the 1st Cavalry Division, the officials said.
Obey was among lawmakers worried about a Bush administration request to shift to security some money budgeted for Iraq electricity, water and other reconstruction.
"Reducing supplies of potable water and increasing sewage will adversely affect the health and well-being of millions of Iraqis, but I see no alternative," said Rep. Jim Kolbe , R-Ariz., chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee that held the hearing.
The State Department recommended the shift after taking over in July as the lead U.S. agency in Iraq, rejecting spending priorities the Pentagon laid out when it led the 15-month military occupation.
Slowing what Kolbe called the already "lamentably slow" progress on promised reconstruction projects will hurt the effort to win Iraqi "hearts and minds" — a key to defeating the insurgents, officials and lawmakers alike fear.
Speaking of the promise to hold free and fair elections in Iraq, Armitage said: "It's got to be our best effort to get it into troubled areas as well. ... I wouldn't want to leave California out of an election in the United States, or Wisconsin, or anybody."
Before Armitage spoke, Rumsfeld reiterated in a meeting with reporters Friday that he believes the elections should go ahead even a he acknowledged some areas may be inaccessible to voting. He did modify his remarks from the previous day, however, saying: "Every Iraqi deserves the right to vote."
"We and the government of Iraq intend to see that the elections are held ... that they're held on time" and "do everything possible to see that that happens, and to see that every Iraqi has the right to vote," he said.
On Thursday, he told a Senate committee that if the election could be held in three-fourths or four-fifths of the country, but violence was too great for a vote in the rest of the country, "So be it. Nothing's perfect in life."
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Thursday that January elections "may not be 100 percent safe."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suggested last week that there could not be "credible elections" if violence doesn't abate.
The United States has been pressing the United Nations to send more people to Iraq to help with elections, but U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said this week that any such increase "is critically dependent on the overall security environment."
In another action, Bush took steps Friday to get Iraq removed from a list of nations that sponsor terrorists.
In a memo to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush noted that there has been a change in leadership and policies of Iraq and said: "Iraq's government has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future."
(Note on the last paragraph: Isn't that a little premature? Maybe they should wait until AFTER the elections before they say what the Iraq government will or won't do...unless they are planning on getting their puppet Allawi elected. Is there some foreshadowing happening here?)
U.S. Officials Differ on Iraqi Elections
By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Top U.S. officials differed Friday over key details of planned Iraqi elections in January, including the unresolved issue of whether all Iraqis will be able to vote and who will protect them from their country's worsening violence.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Congress the elections must be held throughout the country, including areas gripped by violence. That contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said Thursday and again Friday that if insurgents prevent Iraqis from voting in some areas, a partial vote would be better than none at all.
Asked about Rumsfeld's comment, Armitage told a House Appropriations panel, "We're going to have an election that is free and open, and that has to be open to all citizens." Asked after the hearing if partial elections were being considered, he said: "No. Not now. Not that I know of."
Among areas of increasing bloodshed in Iraq are some where U.S.-led coalition forces don't go because they are partly or wholly controlled by insurgents.
Defense officials have put off trying to rout insurgents from those places, including the city of Fallujah, until Iraqi forces now in training are strong enough to hold any area once it is retaken, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said recently.
The interim Iraqi government, meanwhile, has been talking with tribal elders to negotiate a deal to end the insurgents' hold in some places.
Some lawmakers, meanwhile, fear more American troops may have to go to Iraq to help in elections. Gen. John Abizaid, commander of troops in the region, said this week he couldn't discount the possibility, though he said believes Iraqi and possibly international troops could handle the job.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., told Armitage that a plan relying on having sufficient Iraqis trained in time was "astoundingly optimistic." If Americans are to bear the extra burden — as they have been forced to stay in Iraq on extended deployments — then the American people should be told now, and not given the news "on the installment plan," Obey said.
But Army officials said Friday it is likely that during the elections, the U.S. military will have extra troops in the country anyway. The Army is rotating fresh troops into Iraq this fall and winter to replace those whose one-year tours are ending, and it expects to have an overlap of 10,000 to 15,000 extra U.S. soldiers in January when the 3rd Infantry Division's four brigades arrive to replace the 1st Cavalry Division, the officials said.
Obey was among lawmakers worried about a Bush administration request to shift to security some money budgeted for Iraq electricity, water and other reconstruction.
"Reducing supplies of potable water and increasing sewage will adversely affect the health and well-being of millions of Iraqis, but I see no alternative," said Rep. Jim Kolbe , R-Ariz., chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee that held the hearing.
The State Department recommended the shift after taking over in July as the lead U.S. agency in Iraq, rejecting spending priorities the Pentagon laid out when it led the 15-month military occupation.
Slowing what Kolbe called the already "lamentably slow" progress on promised reconstruction projects will hurt the effort to win Iraqi "hearts and minds" — a key to defeating the insurgents, officials and lawmakers alike fear.
Speaking of the promise to hold free and fair elections in Iraq, Armitage said: "It's got to be our best effort to get it into troubled areas as well. ... I wouldn't want to leave California out of an election in the United States, or Wisconsin, or anybody."
Before Armitage spoke, Rumsfeld reiterated in a meeting with reporters Friday that he believes the elections should go ahead even a he acknowledged some areas may be inaccessible to voting. He did modify his remarks from the previous day, however, saying: "Every Iraqi deserves the right to vote."
"We and the government of Iraq intend to see that the elections are held ... that they're held on time" and "do everything possible to see that that happens, and to see that every Iraqi has the right to vote," he said.
On Thursday, he told a Senate committee that if the election could be held in three-fourths or four-fifths of the country, but violence was too great for a vote in the rest of the country, "So be it. Nothing's perfect in life."
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Thursday that January elections "may not be 100 percent safe."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suggested last week that there could not be "credible elections" if violence doesn't abate.
The United States has been pressing the United Nations to send more people to Iraq to help with elections, but U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said this week that any such increase "is critically dependent on the overall security environment."
In another action, Bush took steps Friday to get Iraq removed from a list of nations that sponsor terrorists.
In a memo to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush noted that there has been a change in leadership and policies of Iraq and said: "Iraq's government has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future."
(Note on the last paragraph: Isn't that a little premature? Maybe they should wait until AFTER the elections before they say what the Iraq government will or won't do...unless they are planning on getting their puppet Allawi elected. Is there some foreshadowing happening here?)
Hell
Salon's war correspondent on the Iraq inferno.
Editor's note: Salon correspondent Phillip Robertson has spent five months covering the war in Iraq. As the presidential campaign finally focuses on the war, Robertson offers this assessment of the grim situation there.
By Phillip Robertson09/23/04 -- BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Three years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, attacks in which they played no part, the people of Iraq have been liberated from one tyranny only to be remanded to another: continuous urban warfare, religious extremism and a contagion of fear. The celebrated hand of the free market in Iraq has brought not only cellphones and satellite TV, it has also brought down prices for automatic weapons, making them affordable to the average Iraqi. The last time I checked, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher cost about $250.
In his address to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Bush told a subdued General Assembly, "Today, the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom. The governments that are rising will pose no threat to others. Instead of harboring terrorists, they're fighting terrorist groups. And this progress is good for the long-term security of us all." The words of the president ring hollow.
It is words to this effect that Iraq interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi will likely echo during his visit to the White House Thursday.
Reconstruction, the most important step on the path to a sovereign and stable Iraq, has all but stalled because of targeted acts of violence that reach all the way south to Basra and north to Mosul. Successful countermoves by the Sunni insurgents have prevented the United States and new Iraqi government from gaining any real political support. In fact, billions of dollars originally allocated for reconstruction are now headed for security companies, which are quickly becoming private militias. Unfortunately for optimistic planners in the Bush administration, the coalition is up against not one single group but a constellation of allied militias. It's as if the United States had gone to war against the tribal system itself. There are so many new fighter cells that they are at a loss to distinguish themselves, and so use kidnapping and videotapes as branding strategies. In this market, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Tawhid wa al Jihad, with its monstrous beheading trademark, is the undisputed brand king. Some of the groups are crazier than others. It is a free market of demons.
In the past year, al-Qaida operatives have found in Iraq a fertile recruiting ground, the best possible training camp for jihad against the West, a destination any angry young man can reach if he has the will and pocket money. Iraq's borders, which stretch across hundreds of miles of empty desert, are perfect for smugglers and men seeking martyrdom. No one really knows how many people are coming into Iraq to fight the U.S. But the fighters who do make it across are changing the character of the resistance, internationalizing it, injecting religious extremism into the politics of a once-secular Iraq. Young men coming in from other countries don't fight for Iraq, they fight for Islam.
One of the unutterable truths for the administration is that the U.S. occupation is breeding and fueling insurgent groups. Iraqi government officials rightly fear for their lives, but Iraqi forces, which are supposed to be fighting alongside U.S. troops in the cause of a free and democratic Iraq, are often undisciplined, dangerous and in some places infiltrated by insurgent groups. The Mahdi Army in Sadr City has a number of police officers in its ranks, and in a little remarked upon event that took place during one of the large demonstrations in Baghdad at the time of the siege, the Iraqi police helped Sadr officials address a crowd of Muqtada al-Sadr supporters outside the neutral Green Zone.
On Aug. 13, with U.S. troops looking on, a Mahdi Army sheik urged the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr to go to Najaf to support the men occupying the shrine. He used a public address system in the back of a police pickup to get his message across. The fighters were yelling and grabbing at journalists, proud that the police were on their side, and they wanted us to take note. Above us, in their watchtowers, Iraqi police hung pictures of Muqtada al-Sadr and waved to the crowd. The organizers of the rally were overjoyed.
Fringe groups, extreme groups, associations with the most vocal opposition to the U.S. occupation, steadily acquire more legitimacy in Iraq because they tend to express the true feelings of many Iraqis. Not everyone takes part in the fighting, but many people understand why the groups choose to fight. Jobs in the Iraqi National Guard and the Iraqi police tend to attract poor men who desperately need the money, while the insurgents attract believers, men who feel wronged and humiliated by the U.S. occupation, and who will work for nothing. They are volunteers. Which emotion is stronger?
Iraq is a place where there is no civil debate and interest groups mediate their conflicts with weapons. The U.S. has the most powerful armed presence, its own military, but as an interest group, it represents the smallest number of Iraqis, possibly only those it directly supports. Political legitimacy, we have long known, comes directly from the people; it is not something that can be dictated by a foreign power, no matter how noble its stated intentions. The Allawi government, the result of American occupation, is what many Iraqis scornfully call a U.S. puppet government. In the months following the "transfer of sovereignty," I never heard a single Iraqi offer up praise for it. Not one.
The Sunni insurgents, a creepy hodgepodge of extremist imams, tribal sheiks, former Iraqi government officials and al-Qaida types, have not only scuttled the plans to rebuild the country, they have also cornered the political debate. Relying on abundant examples of victimization and prejudice against Iraqis and Muslims, the fighters present themselves as defenders of the faith. Kidnapping, execution and death threats have become acceptable practices in the eyes of some ordinary Iraqis who may have been horrified by it only a few months before.
When a well-educated Sunni shop owner named Abu Mustapha heard about the kidnapping of French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, he wanted to express his sympathy. It sounded like this: "Phillip, it is very bad that they were kidnapped. You should be careful." I pointed out that the people who were abducting noncombatants and threatening to kill them were behaving like animals. The hostage-takers were demanding that the French government repeal a law prohibiting religious symbols from being worn in schools. Abu Mustapha agreed with the insurgents. "You know, the French should change their law," he said. "It is a bad law. Muslim girls should be able to wear the hejab in school."
Contrary to the administration's hopeful statements, we are not seeing the establishment of a stable Iraq, the mopping up of unreformed Baath Party apparatchiks and dead-enders. We are seeing the beginning of a larger conflict that is busily giving birth to monsters.
Since April, the coalition has lost ground in central and western Iraq and will be forced in the coming months to gain it back at great cost. Fallujah and Ramadi, two sizable Iraqi cities, are no longer under Iraqi government control. Sadr City, with several million people, remains a stronghold for the Mahdi Army and the site of a continuing series of battles. Najaf and Karbala, cities the military has taken back from the Mahdi Army, were never strongholds of the Shia resistance. In Najaf, citizens paid a high price for emancipation. They experienced the destruction of their city and must now set about rebuilding it, a process that will take years. It is hard to imagine that the U.S. is loved in Najaf. While the siege may have been a military victory, it was a political defeat. I left Najaf just as men were beginning to dig out bodies.
But Najaf did not serve as the headstone for the Mahdi Army; at best, the military defeat set them back a few months, driving them deeper underground. The first cavalry division and the Marines successfully routed the Muqtada fighters, pushing them to other cities, scattering them but not destroying them. In my second to last day in Najaf, at the end of the siege, journalists in the old city watched militiamen load wooden carts full of weapons and take them to new hiding places. When we asked where they were going, one fighter said to a comrade in an alley just off Rasul Street, "Don't talk to these people, some of them are spies." That was a perfectly normal response and we didn't take it personally. But it was clear that they weren't taking their anti-aircraft weapons and rockets to U.S. collection points for cash payouts. The skittish Mahdi Army fighters were busy smuggling their weapons out of town to other cities and a number of them were almost certainly headed for Baghdad. We watched them trundle the carts over the streets, trying to keep the weapons from spilling out onto the cobblestones.
Here is something everyone in Iraq knows: The U.S. is now fighting a holding action against a growing uprising, and the more it fights the worse it gets. At the other end of the spectrum, if the U.S. military were to suddenly withdraw, the largest armed factions in Iraq would immediately begin to compete for the capital in a bloody civil war. Recently, a National Intelligence Estimate, a document prepared for President Bush by senior intelligence officials, warned of exactly that outcome. It is the kind of analysis that Secretary of State Colin Powell might write off as defeatist if it had come from the press.
How much control does the U.S. military have over the country? Not as much as it would like. Large sections of the capital are in the hands of insurgents, and organized attacks on convoys, U.S. interests and Iraqi targets are on the rise. The administration can say things are getting better, that a newly democratic Iraq is facing its enemies, but last week Baghdadis woke up at 5 in the morning to the sound of a large volley of rockets slamming into the Green Zone. The explosions sounded like they were coming from more than one direction, the sign of a carefully coordinated attack.
This summer, it wasn't unusual to wake up to the sound of roadside bombs going off near Humvees on their early morning U.S. patrols. Month by month, attacks became more severe, bombs more powerful. In the sky above the Duleimi hotel, medevac helicopters would shudder through the air on their way to combat support hospitals. When something truly ugly was going on, we could hear the rush of the medevac Black Hawks in a steady progression.
What the war's champions prefer to ignore is that in large parts of Iraq, broad support exists for anyone willing to pick up a gun and fight the United States. Fighters become local stars and when they die, their friends hold their photographs as treasured objects, pass them around at parties, and later try to emulate their fallen buddies. Paradise awaits, full of virgins who have bodies made of light. Many young Iraqi men believe this. A young fighter guarding the bottom of Rasul Street in Najaf said, just before the collapse of the truce on Aug. 4, "Paradise is a place without corruption. It's not like this place, it smells sweet." Thousands of Iraqis, not all of them poor and unemployed, have checked into the resistance, not only because it's honorable but because it's fun. Spreading through family and neighborhoods, the insurgency can be anywhere, anytime.
A young Apache helicopter gunner who has fought in many of Iraq's major battles wrote me a few days ago and said: "I have a feeling that with every one member of the resistance that we kill, we give birth to ten more." At a distance of hundreds of feet in the air, a perceptive man can say this. Here is what the situation looks like from the ground.
Iraq seems modern only at first glance. The highways, factories and cities are familiar enough but they hide a deep tribal sensibility. Insults to family honor in Iraq are usually repaid in blood or money depending on the severity, and this system of revenge and honor fuels the war instead of slowing it down. The United States military, unable to relate to a tribal society, finds itself the player in a nationwide blood feud. To understand the intensity of these feelings of honor and kinship, read "Othello" or watch "The Godfather." This is how many tribal Iraqis perceive the world. It is not necessarily a lack of sophistication but a mark of being outside the West. Tribal culture in Iraq goes back thousands of years. When an Iraqi man loses a family member to an American missile, he must take another American life to even the score. He may not subscribe to the notion that some Americans are noncombatants, viewing them instead as the members of a supertribe that has come to invade his land.
The war, illegal and founded on a vast lie, has produced two tragedies of equal magnitude: an embryonic civil war in the world's oldest country, and a triumph for those in the Bush administration who, without a trace of shame, act as if the truth does not matter. Lying until the lie became true, the administration pursued a course of action that guaranteed large sections of Iraq would become havens for jihadis and radical Islamists. That is the logic promoted by people who take for themselves divine infallibility -- a righteousness that blinds and destroys. Like credulous Weimar Germans who were so delighted by rigged wrestling matches, millions of Americans have accepted Bush's assertions that the war in Iraq has made the United States and the rest of the world a safer place to live. Of course, this is false.
But it is a useful fiction because it is a happy one. All we need to know, according to the administration, is that America is a good country, full of good people and therefore cannot make bloody mistakes when it comes to its own security. The bitter consequence of succumbing to such happy talk is that the government of the most powerful nation in the world now operates unchecked and unmoored from reality; leaving us teetering on the brink of another presidential term where abuse of authority has been recast as virtue.
The logic the administration uses to promote its actions -- preemptive war, indefinite detention, torture of prisoners, the abandonment of the Geneva Convention abroad and the Bill of Rights at home -- is simple, faith-based and therefore empty of reason. The worsening war is the creation of the Bush administration, which is simultaneously holding Americans and Iraqis hostage to a bloody conflict that cannot be won, only stalemated.
Over the last three years, practicing a philosophy of deliberate deception, fear-mongering and abuse of authority, the Bush administration has done more to undermine the republic of Lincoln and Jefferson than the cells of al-Qaida. It has willfully ignored our fundamental laws and squandered the nation's wealth in bloody, open-ended pursuits. Corporations like Halliburton, with close ties to government officials, are profiting greatly from the war while thousands of American soldiers undertake the dangerous work of patrolling the streets of Iraqi cities. We have arrived at a moment of national crisis.
At home, the United States, under the Bush administration, is rapidly drifting toward a security state whose principal currency is fear. Abroad, it has used fear to justify the invasion of Iraq -- fear of weapons of mass destruction, of terrorist attacks, of Iraq itself. The administration, under false premises, invaded a country that it barely understood. We entered a country in shambles, a population divided against itself. The U.S. invasion was a catalyst of violence and religious hatred, and the continuing presence of American troops has only made matters worse. Iraq today bears no resemblance to the president's vision of a fledgling democracy. On its way to national elections in January, Iraq has already slipped into chaos.
Phillip Robertson is reporting from Iraq for Salon
Salon's war correspondent on the Iraq inferno.
Editor's note: Salon correspondent Phillip Robertson has spent five months covering the war in Iraq. As the presidential campaign finally focuses on the war, Robertson offers this assessment of the grim situation there.
By Phillip Robertson09/23/04 -- BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Three years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, attacks in which they played no part, the people of Iraq have been liberated from one tyranny only to be remanded to another: continuous urban warfare, religious extremism and a contagion of fear. The celebrated hand of the free market in Iraq has brought not only cellphones and satellite TV, it has also brought down prices for automatic weapons, making them affordable to the average Iraqi. The last time I checked, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher cost about $250.
In his address to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Bush told a subdued General Assembly, "Today, the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom. The governments that are rising will pose no threat to others. Instead of harboring terrorists, they're fighting terrorist groups. And this progress is good for the long-term security of us all." The words of the president ring hollow.
It is words to this effect that Iraq interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi will likely echo during his visit to the White House Thursday.
Reconstruction, the most important step on the path to a sovereign and stable Iraq, has all but stalled because of targeted acts of violence that reach all the way south to Basra and north to Mosul. Successful countermoves by the Sunni insurgents have prevented the United States and new Iraqi government from gaining any real political support. In fact, billions of dollars originally allocated for reconstruction are now headed for security companies, which are quickly becoming private militias. Unfortunately for optimistic planners in the Bush administration, the coalition is up against not one single group but a constellation of allied militias. It's as if the United States had gone to war against the tribal system itself. There are so many new fighter cells that they are at a loss to distinguish themselves, and so use kidnapping and videotapes as branding strategies. In this market, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Tawhid wa al Jihad, with its monstrous beheading trademark, is the undisputed brand king. Some of the groups are crazier than others. It is a free market of demons.
In the past year, al-Qaida operatives have found in Iraq a fertile recruiting ground, the best possible training camp for jihad against the West, a destination any angry young man can reach if he has the will and pocket money. Iraq's borders, which stretch across hundreds of miles of empty desert, are perfect for smugglers and men seeking martyrdom. No one really knows how many people are coming into Iraq to fight the U.S. But the fighters who do make it across are changing the character of the resistance, internationalizing it, injecting religious extremism into the politics of a once-secular Iraq. Young men coming in from other countries don't fight for Iraq, they fight for Islam.
One of the unutterable truths for the administration is that the U.S. occupation is breeding and fueling insurgent groups. Iraqi government officials rightly fear for their lives, but Iraqi forces, which are supposed to be fighting alongside U.S. troops in the cause of a free and democratic Iraq, are often undisciplined, dangerous and in some places infiltrated by insurgent groups. The Mahdi Army in Sadr City has a number of police officers in its ranks, and in a little remarked upon event that took place during one of the large demonstrations in Baghdad at the time of the siege, the Iraqi police helped Sadr officials address a crowd of Muqtada al-Sadr supporters outside the neutral Green Zone.
On Aug. 13, with U.S. troops looking on, a Mahdi Army sheik urged the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr to go to Najaf to support the men occupying the shrine. He used a public address system in the back of a police pickup to get his message across. The fighters were yelling and grabbing at journalists, proud that the police were on their side, and they wanted us to take note. Above us, in their watchtowers, Iraqi police hung pictures of Muqtada al-Sadr and waved to the crowd. The organizers of the rally were overjoyed.
Fringe groups, extreme groups, associations with the most vocal opposition to the U.S. occupation, steadily acquire more legitimacy in Iraq because they tend to express the true feelings of many Iraqis. Not everyone takes part in the fighting, but many people understand why the groups choose to fight. Jobs in the Iraqi National Guard and the Iraqi police tend to attract poor men who desperately need the money, while the insurgents attract believers, men who feel wronged and humiliated by the U.S. occupation, and who will work for nothing. They are volunteers. Which emotion is stronger?
Iraq is a place where there is no civil debate and interest groups mediate their conflicts with weapons. The U.S. has the most powerful armed presence, its own military, but as an interest group, it represents the smallest number of Iraqis, possibly only those it directly supports. Political legitimacy, we have long known, comes directly from the people; it is not something that can be dictated by a foreign power, no matter how noble its stated intentions. The Allawi government, the result of American occupation, is what many Iraqis scornfully call a U.S. puppet government. In the months following the "transfer of sovereignty," I never heard a single Iraqi offer up praise for it. Not one.
The Sunni insurgents, a creepy hodgepodge of extremist imams, tribal sheiks, former Iraqi government officials and al-Qaida types, have not only scuttled the plans to rebuild the country, they have also cornered the political debate. Relying on abundant examples of victimization and prejudice against Iraqis and Muslims, the fighters present themselves as defenders of the faith. Kidnapping, execution and death threats have become acceptable practices in the eyes of some ordinary Iraqis who may have been horrified by it only a few months before.
When a well-educated Sunni shop owner named Abu Mustapha heard about the kidnapping of French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, he wanted to express his sympathy. It sounded like this: "Phillip, it is very bad that they were kidnapped. You should be careful." I pointed out that the people who were abducting noncombatants and threatening to kill them were behaving like animals. The hostage-takers were demanding that the French government repeal a law prohibiting religious symbols from being worn in schools. Abu Mustapha agreed with the insurgents. "You know, the French should change their law," he said. "It is a bad law. Muslim girls should be able to wear the hejab in school."
Contrary to the administration's hopeful statements, we are not seeing the establishment of a stable Iraq, the mopping up of unreformed Baath Party apparatchiks and dead-enders. We are seeing the beginning of a larger conflict that is busily giving birth to monsters.
Since April, the coalition has lost ground in central and western Iraq and will be forced in the coming months to gain it back at great cost. Fallujah and Ramadi, two sizable Iraqi cities, are no longer under Iraqi government control. Sadr City, with several million people, remains a stronghold for the Mahdi Army and the site of a continuing series of battles. Najaf and Karbala, cities the military has taken back from the Mahdi Army, were never strongholds of the Shia resistance. In Najaf, citizens paid a high price for emancipation. They experienced the destruction of their city and must now set about rebuilding it, a process that will take years. It is hard to imagine that the U.S. is loved in Najaf. While the siege may have been a military victory, it was a political defeat. I left Najaf just as men were beginning to dig out bodies.
But Najaf did not serve as the headstone for the Mahdi Army; at best, the military defeat set them back a few months, driving them deeper underground. The first cavalry division and the Marines successfully routed the Muqtada fighters, pushing them to other cities, scattering them but not destroying them. In my second to last day in Najaf, at the end of the siege, journalists in the old city watched militiamen load wooden carts full of weapons and take them to new hiding places. When we asked where they were going, one fighter said to a comrade in an alley just off Rasul Street, "Don't talk to these people, some of them are spies." That was a perfectly normal response and we didn't take it personally. But it was clear that they weren't taking their anti-aircraft weapons and rockets to U.S. collection points for cash payouts. The skittish Mahdi Army fighters were busy smuggling their weapons out of town to other cities and a number of them were almost certainly headed for Baghdad. We watched them trundle the carts over the streets, trying to keep the weapons from spilling out onto the cobblestones.
Here is something everyone in Iraq knows: The U.S. is now fighting a holding action against a growing uprising, and the more it fights the worse it gets. At the other end of the spectrum, if the U.S. military were to suddenly withdraw, the largest armed factions in Iraq would immediately begin to compete for the capital in a bloody civil war. Recently, a National Intelligence Estimate, a document prepared for President Bush by senior intelligence officials, warned of exactly that outcome. It is the kind of analysis that Secretary of State Colin Powell might write off as defeatist if it had come from the press.
How much control does the U.S. military have over the country? Not as much as it would like. Large sections of the capital are in the hands of insurgents, and organized attacks on convoys, U.S. interests and Iraqi targets are on the rise. The administration can say things are getting better, that a newly democratic Iraq is facing its enemies, but last week Baghdadis woke up at 5 in the morning to the sound of a large volley of rockets slamming into the Green Zone. The explosions sounded like they were coming from more than one direction, the sign of a carefully coordinated attack.
This summer, it wasn't unusual to wake up to the sound of roadside bombs going off near Humvees on their early morning U.S. patrols. Month by month, attacks became more severe, bombs more powerful. In the sky above the Duleimi hotel, medevac helicopters would shudder through the air on their way to combat support hospitals. When something truly ugly was going on, we could hear the rush of the medevac Black Hawks in a steady progression.
What the war's champions prefer to ignore is that in large parts of Iraq, broad support exists for anyone willing to pick up a gun and fight the United States. Fighters become local stars and when they die, their friends hold their photographs as treasured objects, pass them around at parties, and later try to emulate their fallen buddies. Paradise awaits, full of virgins who have bodies made of light. Many young Iraqi men believe this. A young fighter guarding the bottom of Rasul Street in Najaf said, just before the collapse of the truce on Aug. 4, "Paradise is a place without corruption. It's not like this place, it smells sweet." Thousands of Iraqis, not all of them poor and unemployed, have checked into the resistance, not only because it's honorable but because it's fun. Spreading through family and neighborhoods, the insurgency can be anywhere, anytime.
A young Apache helicopter gunner who has fought in many of Iraq's major battles wrote me a few days ago and said: "I have a feeling that with every one member of the resistance that we kill, we give birth to ten more." At a distance of hundreds of feet in the air, a perceptive man can say this. Here is what the situation looks like from the ground.
Iraq seems modern only at first glance. The highways, factories and cities are familiar enough but they hide a deep tribal sensibility. Insults to family honor in Iraq are usually repaid in blood or money depending on the severity, and this system of revenge and honor fuels the war instead of slowing it down. The United States military, unable to relate to a tribal society, finds itself the player in a nationwide blood feud. To understand the intensity of these feelings of honor and kinship, read "Othello" or watch "The Godfather." This is how many tribal Iraqis perceive the world. It is not necessarily a lack of sophistication but a mark of being outside the West. Tribal culture in Iraq goes back thousands of years. When an Iraqi man loses a family member to an American missile, he must take another American life to even the score. He may not subscribe to the notion that some Americans are noncombatants, viewing them instead as the members of a supertribe that has come to invade his land.
The war, illegal and founded on a vast lie, has produced two tragedies of equal magnitude: an embryonic civil war in the world's oldest country, and a triumph for those in the Bush administration who, without a trace of shame, act as if the truth does not matter. Lying until the lie became true, the administration pursued a course of action that guaranteed large sections of Iraq would become havens for jihadis and radical Islamists. That is the logic promoted by people who take for themselves divine infallibility -- a righteousness that blinds and destroys. Like credulous Weimar Germans who were so delighted by rigged wrestling matches, millions of Americans have accepted Bush's assertions that the war in Iraq has made the United States and the rest of the world a safer place to live. Of course, this is false.
But it is a useful fiction because it is a happy one. All we need to know, according to the administration, is that America is a good country, full of good people and therefore cannot make bloody mistakes when it comes to its own security. The bitter consequence of succumbing to such happy talk is that the government of the most powerful nation in the world now operates unchecked and unmoored from reality; leaving us teetering on the brink of another presidential term where abuse of authority has been recast as virtue.
The logic the administration uses to promote its actions -- preemptive war, indefinite detention, torture of prisoners, the abandonment of the Geneva Convention abroad and the Bill of Rights at home -- is simple, faith-based and therefore empty of reason. The worsening war is the creation of the Bush administration, which is simultaneously holding Americans and Iraqis hostage to a bloody conflict that cannot be won, only stalemated.
Over the last three years, practicing a philosophy of deliberate deception, fear-mongering and abuse of authority, the Bush administration has done more to undermine the republic of Lincoln and Jefferson than the cells of al-Qaida. It has willfully ignored our fundamental laws and squandered the nation's wealth in bloody, open-ended pursuits. Corporations like Halliburton, with close ties to government officials, are profiting greatly from the war while thousands of American soldiers undertake the dangerous work of patrolling the streets of Iraqi cities. We have arrived at a moment of national crisis.
At home, the United States, under the Bush administration, is rapidly drifting toward a security state whose principal currency is fear. Abroad, it has used fear to justify the invasion of Iraq -- fear of weapons of mass destruction, of terrorist attacks, of Iraq itself. The administration, under false premises, invaded a country that it barely understood. We entered a country in shambles, a population divided against itself. The U.S. invasion was a catalyst of violence and religious hatred, and the continuing presence of American troops has only made matters worse. Iraq today bears no resemblance to the president's vision of a fledgling democracy. On its way to national elections in January, Iraq has already slipped into chaos.
Phillip Robertson is reporting from Iraq for Salon
Thursday, September 23, 2004
What the world is saying...
European Press Criticizes Bush Address to U.N. as a Denial of a Worsening Situation in Iraq
By PATRICK E. TYLER
Published: September 23, 2004
ONDON, Sept. 22 - The editorial cartoon in The Times of London on Wednesday was derisive: the first panel showed President Bush telling the United Nations General Assembly, "Friends, our policy in Iraq is directed solely towards a successful election."
The second panel had him saying which election: "Mine."
European newspapers, including some that supported the American military campaign in Iraq, were largely critical of Mr. Bush's address on Tuesday to the United Nations, accusing him of being unrealistic about the worsening situation in Iraq.
The Financial Times contended in its lead editorial that the Bush administration "systematically refused to engage with what actually has happened in Iraq" - namely, in the newspaper's view, that American policy "mistakes" had "handed the initiative to jihadi terrorists" who "now have a new base from which to challenge the West and moderate Islam."
The newspaper said that Mr. Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, "after being evasive, long-winded and sometimes contradictory," was beginning to speak more realistically than Mr. Bush about the deterioration of security in Iraq. And, the newspaper asserted, Mr. Bush's "disengagement from the reality of a sinking Iraq is alarming."
The left-leaning Independent of Britain carried an editorial cartoon of Osama bin Laden putting up a Bush campaign poster saying "4 More Years" on a shell-pocked bit of masonry in Iraq. The cartoon seemed to be inspired by a diplomatic spat over remarks attributed to the British ambassador to Italy, Sir Ivor Roberts. After a private discussion on policy that was supposed to be off the record, Sir Ivor was quoted by an Italian newspaper as saying that Mr. Bush had become "the best recruiting sergeant" for Al Qaeda.
In its editorial, The Independent said that Mr. Bush "gave little hint" in his speech of the "catastrophic war" under way in Iraq. "Instead of a measured account of reality in Iraq," the editorial said, "he treated the ranks of national leaders gathered at the U.N. to a portentous and self-justifying speech brimming with clichés about 'freedom' and 'democracy' that glorified the American way."
Applause for Mr. Bush was scarce on the Continent, but in Poland, the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper ran a commentary by Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, who noted that Mr. Bush's speech had to be considered in the context of an election campaign. And after hearing the views of Senator Kerry, the foreign minister said, Poland considers itself "closer to the position presented by Bush.''
The Polish newspaper Nasz Dziennik, however, argued in an editorial that Mr. Bush, having "attacked Iraq in defiance" of those nations that called for United Nations authorization for invasion, Mr. Bush was now trying to convince the international community that it should pay for the "chaos'' caused by "reckless policy."
In France, two major newspapers commented on Mr. Bush's remarks, one by contrasting his approach with Mr. Kerry's. The left-of-center Libération congratulated Mr. Kerry for belatedly setting forth a comprehensive position on Iraq, and for advocating an approach that would "involve U.S. allies in a broader way."
President Bush, the paper said, is "part of the problem rather than the solution" when it comes to working with allies. In his speech to the United Nations, the paper said, Mr. Bush "showed that slightly autistic self-satisfaction remains the dominant tendency of American power."
In Le Figaro, which reflects the thinking of France's conservative establishment, the correspondent Philippe Gélie wrote that Mr. Bush was "impervious to criticism'' in the conduct of American foreign policy, and characterized his speech as that of a "campaigning American president'' who "lectured the rest of the world.''
"In his vision of a global war between good and evil, each new crime strengthens his conviction of having been right against those who accuse him of having invaded Iraq under false pretenses,'' Mr. Gélie wrote.
An editorial in the German daily Tagesspiegel was blunt. Its headline: "U.S., U.N., Iraq: The truth counts for nothing.''
Italy's largest newspaper, Corriere della Sera, said Mr. Bush had "forgotten that his go-it-alone approach has alienated many sympathizers'' with American goals in the Middle East, and warned the White House that it would take more "than an isolated appeal during an election campaign'' to rebuild the consensus that once existed on Iraq.
European Press Criticizes Bush Address to U.N. as a Denial of a Worsening Situation in Iraq
By PATRICK E. TYLER
Published: September 23, 2004
ONDON, Sept. 22 - The editorial cartoon in The Times of London on Wednesday was derisive: the first panel showed President Bush telling the United Nations General Assembly, "Friends, our policy in Iraq is directed solely towards a successful election."
The second panel had him saying which election: "Mine."
European newspapers, including some that supported the American military campaign in Iraq, were largely critical of Mr. Bush's address on Tuesday to the United Nations, accusing him of being unrealistic about the worsening situation in Iraq.
The Financial Times contended in its lead editorial that the Bush administration "systematically refused to engage with what actually has happened in Iraq" - namely, in the newspaper's view, that American policy "mistakes" had "handed the initiative to jihadi terrorists" who "now have a new base from which to challenge the West and moderate Islam."
The newspaper said that Mr. Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, "after being evasive, long-winded and sometimes contradictory," was beginning to speak more realistically than Mr. Bush about the deterioration of security in Iraq. And, the newspaper asserted, Mr. Bush's "disengagement from the reality of a sinking Iraq is alarming."
The left-leaning Independent of Britain carried an editorial cartoon of Osama bin Laden putting up a Bush campaign poster saying "4 More Years" on a shell-pocked bit of masonry in Iraq. The cartoon seemed to be inspired by a diplomatic spat over remarks attributed to the British ambassador to Italy, Sir Ivor Roberts. After a private discussion on policy that was supposed to be off the record, Sir Ivor was quoted by an Italian newspaper as saying that Mr. Bush had become "the best recruiting sergeant" for Al Qaeda.
In its editorial, The Independent said that Mr. Bush "gave little hint" in his speech of the "catastrophic war" under way in Iraq. "Instead of a measured account of reality in Iraq," the editorial said, "he treated the ranks of national leaders gathered at the U.N. to a portentous and self-justifying speech brimming with clichés about 'freedom' and 'democracy' that glorified the American way."
Applause for Mr. Bush was scarce on the Continent, but in Poland, the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper ran a commentary by Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, who noted that Mr. Bush's speech had to be considered in the context of an election campaign. And after hearing the views of Senator Kerry, the foreign minister said, Poland considers itself "closer to the position presented by Bush.''
The Polish newspaper Nasz Dziennik, however, argued in an editorial that Mr. Bush, having "attacked Iraq in defiance" of those nations that called for United Nations authorization for invasion, Mr. Bush was now trying to convince the international community that it should pay for the "chaos'' caused by "reckless policy."
In France, two major newspapers commented on Mr. Bush's remarks, one by contrasting his approach with Mr. Kerry's. The left-of-center Libération congratulated Mr. Kerry for belatedly setting forth a comprehensive position on Iraq, and for advocating an approach that would "involve U.S. allies in a broader way."
President Bush, the paper said, is "part of the problem rather than the solution" when it comes to working with allies. In his speech to the United Nations, the paper said, Mr. Bush "showed that slightly autistic self-satisfaction remains the dominant tendency of American power."
In Le Figaro, which reflects the thinking of France's conservative establishment, the correspondent Philippe Gélie wrote that Mr. Bush was "impervious to criticism'' in the conduct of American foreign policy, and characterized his speech as that of a "campaigning American president'' who "lectured the rest of the world.''
"In his vision of a global war between good and evil, each new crime strengthens his conviction of having been right against those who accuse him of having invaded Iraq under false pretenses,'' Mr. Gélie wrote.
An editorial in the German daily Tagesspiegel was blunt. Its headline: "U.S., U.N., Iraq: The truth counts for nothing.''
Italy's largest newspaper, Corriere della Sera, said Mr. Bush had "forgotten that his go-it-alone approach has alienated many sympathizers'' with American goals in the Middle East, and warned the White House that it would take more "than an isolated appeal during an election campaign'' to rebuild the consensus that once existed on Iraq.
Umm...unhinged from reality doesn't even begin to describe it...
Bush Shrugs Off Bad Polls on Iraq Outlook
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Thursday shrugged off polls that suggest most Iraqis see Americans as occupiers not liberators. "I saw a poll that said the 'right track-wrong track' in Iraq was better than here in America," he told reporters.
"It was pretty darn strong," Bush told a Rose Garden news conference with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. "I mean, the people see a better future."
The campaign of Bush's Democratic rival John Kerry was quick to respond, issuing a statement asking, "Did Bush really just say this?" Kerry campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart said Bush must be "unhinged from reality" to cite a poll suggesting that there are more Iraqis who feel their country is on the right track than there are Americans who feel the same about the United States.
Bush did not indicate what survey he was referring to, but White House aides cited a poll in Iraq conducted in late August that indicated some 51 percent of Iraqis who were surveyed felt their country was headed in "the right direction," up slightly from a May/June poll.
The number of Iraqis who felt things were heading in "the wrong direction" dropped from 39 percent to 31 percent over the same period, according to the poll by the Iraq Office of the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit group that promotes democracy.
Bush had been asked about earlier polls, including one taken by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-organized panel that oversaw the Iraqi government before last June's transfer of authority, that showed a majority of Iraqis were unhappy with U.S. policy and wanted the Americans to leave.
Iraqi opinions have changed since the turnover because they "now have got Iraqi leadership. Prime Minister Allawi and his cabinet are making decisions on behalf of the Iraqi people," Bush said.
"Talk to the leader. I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America where it's nice and safe and secure. But I'd talk to this man," Bush said.
(NOTE: Did Bush really just say that? "...in America where it's nice and safe and secure." And how many months have they been telling us that we are at risk of another terrorist attack? So what is it? Are we safe and secure, or on the verge of being attacked?)
"There's a lot of polls. Sometimes they show you up and sometimes they show you down, as you might remember," Bush said with a smile.
For the United States, a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed 45 percent of those surveyed believed the country was on the right track, 52 percent the wrong track.
Those figures had been worse during the summer, but after the GOP convention in late August and early September, most numbers have been moving up slightly toward the positive, and toward Bush.
Lockhart, the Kerry spokesman, derided Bush's comment. "He just basically said a country that is dissolving into potential civil war, where terrorists have taken over large sections of the country and where Americans can no longer secure four major cities, that the people over there think better of their country than people here in the United States," Lockhart said. "That's what I call unhinged from reality."
Bush Shrugs Off Bad Polls on Iraq Outlook
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Thursday shrugged off polls that suggest most Iraqis see Americans as occupiers not liberators. "I saw a poll that said the 'right track-wrong track' in Iraq was better than here in America," he told reporters.
"It was pretty darn strong," Bush told a Rose Garden news conference with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. "I mean, the people see a better future."
The campaign of Bush's Democratic rival John Kerry was quick to respond, issuing a statement asking, "Did Bush really just say this?" Kerry campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart said Bush must be "unhinged from reality" to cite a poll suggesting that there are more Iraqis who feel their country is on the right track than there are Americans who feel the same about the United States.
Bush did not indicate what survey he was referring to, but White House aides cited a poll in Iraq conducted in late August that indicated some 51 percent of Iraqis who were surveyed felt their country was headed in "the right direction," up slightly from a May/June poll.
The number of Iraqis who felt things were heading in "the wrong direction" dropped from 39 percent to 31 percent over the same period, according to the poll by the Iraq Office of the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit group that promotes democracy.
Bush had been asked about earlier polls, including one taken by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-organized panel that oversaw the Iraqi government before last June's transfer of authority, that showed a majority of Iraqis were unhappy with U.S. policy and wanted the Americans to leave.
Iraqi opinions have changed since the turnover because they "now have got Iraqi leadership. Prime Minister Allawi and his cabinet are making decisions on behalf of the Iraqi people," Bush said.
"Talk to the leader. I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America where it's nice and safe and secure. But I'd talk to this man," Bush said.
(NOTE: Did Bush really just say that? "...in America where it's nice and safe and secure." And how many months have they been telling us that we are at risk of another terrorist attack? So what is it? Are we safe and secure, or on the verge of being attacked?)
"There's a lot of polls. Sometimes they show you up and sometimes they show you down, as you might remember," Bush said with a smile.
For the United States, a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed 45 percent of those surveyed believed the country was on the right track, 52 percent the wrong track.
Those figures had been worse during the summer, but after the GOP convention in late August and early September, most numbers have been moving up slightly toward the positive, and toward Bush.
Lockhart, the Kerry spokesman, derided Bush's comment. "He just basically said a country that is dissolving into potential civil war, where terrorists have taken over large sections of the country and where Americans can no longer secure four major cities, that the people over there think better of their country than people here in the United States," Lockhart said. "That's what I call unhinged from reality."
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Though this article from Salon.com was written just after the Republican Convention, it still makes some relevent points as to the spin and the lies that are levelled at Kerry, and provides evidence that the accusations from the Bush camp are rarely truthful.
The truth isn't out there
From Dick Cheney on down, the Republican convention's speakers haven't let the facts get in the way of their partisan ferocity.
By Tim Grieve
Sept. 2, 2004 NEW YORK -- Arnold Schwarzenegger told adoring Republican delegates this week that the Democrats should have called their Boston convention "True Lies." But in speech after speech inside Madison Square Garden, Schwarzenegger's Republican colleagues have shown themselves to be truth-challenged. On big points and small, in policy arguments and personal anecdotes, Republican convention speakers have misrepresented, misconstrued, dissembled and dipsy-doodled. You can argue that they weren't lying, exactly, but you can't say they told the whole truth, either.
Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia delivered the Republicans' keynote address Wednesday night, and he spent a good portion of it railing against Kerry for voting against the "very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the war on terror." What Miller didn't say: Many Republicans voted against those same weapons systems.
"America needs to know the facts," Miller said, but he failed to mention a few of them. Miller told the delegates that Kerry voted against production of the F-14 and F-15 fighters and the Apache helicopter, but he didn't say that Dick Cheney, as defense secretary, proposed eliminating both of them, too. Miller criticized Kerry for voting against the B-2 bomber, but he didn't say that President George H.W. Bush also proposed an end to the B-2 bomber program.
In his 1992 State of the Union Address, Bush said he supported such cuts "with confidence" based on the recommendations of his Secretary of Defense: Dick Cheney. With the Cold War over, Bush said, failing to cut defense spending would be "insensible to progress."
That's not how Miller described the cuts Wednesday night. He said Kerry's record on defense spending suggests that he wants to arm U.S. troops with "spitballs." Miller, who was introduced as the "conscience of the Democratic Party," didn't see fit to mention that he and Kerry both voted in 2002 for the largest military spending increase in two decades -- a defense bill that Republican Senator John Warner said would "help to ensure that our military has the tools it needs to defend our nation."
Miller and the Bush campaign plainly know the truth about what he was saying -- the Annenberg Public Policy Center and any number of others have called the Republicans on their misleading argument about Kerry's votes on weapons systems. But adherence to the truth wasn't Miller's strong suit Wednesday night.
Miller said that Kerry has made it clear that he would never "use military force without U.N. approval," and that he would let "Paris decide when America needs defending." In fact, what Kerry said in his Boston convention speech was this: "I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security."
Miller's anti-Kerry rant wasn't the only convention speech in which Republicans misrepresented Kerry's statements or his Senate record. In his somniferous speech Wednesday night, Cheney mocked Kerry for saying that the United States should fight a "more sensitive war on terror, as though al-Qaida will be impressed by our softer side." But Kerry has not suggested a show of sensitivity toward al-Qaida; he said that America should fight a "more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history."
With delegates shouting "flip-flop, flip-flop," Cheney blasted Kerry for supporting the "No Child Left Behind" legislation and then opposing it. In fact, Kerry supports No Child Left Behind but argues that the Bush administration has failed to provide promised funding for it. He mocked Kerry for voting for and then against the $87 billion supplemental funding bill for Iraq, but he didn't explain that Kerry voted on two different proposals -- one that would have paid for the $87 billion by rolling back tax cuts for the rich, and one which simply added the $87 billion to the federal deficit.
Sill, Cheney stayed away from most of the whoppers he tells on the campaign trail. He didn't repeat the phony charge he made last month in Minnesota -- that Kerry has the most liberal lifetime voting record of any current Senator. But Cheney didn't have to work hard to misrepresent Kerry's positions and his record; other convention speakers carried that water for him.
Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey told delegates Wednesday evening that John Kerry "can't win by telling us the truth," but then she immediately fudged the facts herself. In a claim that has been refuted so often that even Cheney doesn't make it anymore, Healey told the delegates: "The truth is that John Kerry -- not Ted Kennedy -- is the most liberal Senator in the United States."
But that's not the truth, really. Earlier this year, the National Journal identified Kerry as the senator with the most liberal voting record in 2003 -- a year in which Kerry missed so many votes while campaigning that the National Journal didn't even apply two of its three measures of "liberalness" to him.
When the magazine looked at the more meaningful lifetime voting records of current sitting senators, Kerry wasn't the most liberal one -- and it wasn't even close. Ten other senators have lifetime liberal scores higher than Kerry's -- and, yes, Ted Kennedy is among them.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney continued the home-state slam Wednesday, claiming that Kerry had voted for "tax hikes 98 times." The Bush campaign made the same claim in a television ad released last week, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center has already shot it down.
The problem with the "98 times" claim is the Republicans' fuzzy math. While their campaign calculus is getting better -- in March, the President claimed that Kerry "voted over 350 times for higher taxes on the American people" -- the Republicans' calculation repeatedly miscounts and mischaracterizes Kerry's votes.
Annenberg explains that 43 of the 98 "tax increase" votes were actually votes on budget resolutions that did not, in and of themselves, raise taxes. Moreover, in several instances, the total of 98 includes multiple votes on the same piece of legislation: By the GOP's math, Kerry's support for President Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction package as it wound its way through Congress should count as 16 separate votes to raise taxes. Kerry gets dinged six times for a single 1996 budget resolution, seven times for a 1997 budget resolution, and six more times for supporting a proposal to raise the cigarette tax. That proposal was sponsored by Sen. John McCain -- a Republican.
Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele also took Kerry to task for sharing views with Republicans. Steele criticized Kerry for proposing a $6 billion cut in intelligence funding "just a year after the first attack on the World Trade Center." What Steele didn't say: Three months before Kerry made his proposal, Rep. Porter Goss -- Bush's pick to be the new CIA chief -- proposed a much larger cut in intelligence funding. Neither Goss' proposal nor Kerry's passed. But as Annenberg has noted, a Republican proposal to cut $1 billion from the intelligence budget passed on a voice vote the same year.
While Republicans have aimed most of their truth-stretching at Kerry, they have also engaged in the occasional embellishment to bolster Bush's image as a resolute leader. On the convention's opening night, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called Bush "a leader who is willing to stick with difficult decisions even as public opinion shifts." On the second night, Schwarzenegger said that Bush is a "leader who doesn't flinch, doesn't waver, does not back down." While it's true that Bush has stuck stubbornly to some of his failed policies -- until this week, he couldn't bring himself to admit any mistakes in Iraq -- just as often he has crumbled when public opinion has turned against his views.
Bush initially opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, then changed his mind when it was clear the votes were against him. He opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission, then supported it. He opposed a congressional investigation into the intelligence failures that led to the war in Iraq, then supported it.
The president who was praised so often this week for his "unflinching" war on terror once said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive", then said that he didn't really care about finding him. The president who never wavers used to say that America will win the war on terror; over the weekend, he said "I don't think we can ever win it"; over the last week, he's been explaining that he didn't really mean what he said when he said it.
The flip-flops don't fit the image Karl Rove has crafted for Bush, so the convention speakers have simply ignored them. In their place, they've told stories suggesting that Bush has shown "courage" by appearing in photo ops -- grabbing that megaphone at Ground Zero, eating turkey with the troops in Baghdad -- and by standing up to public opinion. Schwarzenegger said: "The President didn't go into Iraq because the polls told him it was popular. As a matter of fact, the polls said just the opposite."
But as a matter of fact, that's not a fact. In a CBS/New York Times poll released on March 6, 2003 -- 11 days before Bush gave his final ultimatum to Saddam Hussein -- 69 percent of the respondents said they approved of U.S. military action to remove Hussein from power. While the White House surely helped shape public opinion -- by misrepresenting intelligence, by incessantly linking Saddam Hussein and 9/11, by predicting that American soldiers would be "greeted as liberators" -- the president didn't buck public opinion when he went to war.
On Tuesday night, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist tried to make Bush look like a strong leader on domestic issues, saying that he would stand up to the trial lawyers who are driving up the costs of healthcare. Repeating a line used by Bush himself, Frist declared: "Let's be clear. You can no longer be both pro-patient and pro-trial lawyer." He said that Kerry has "made his choice" by choosing Edwards as his running mate. But Frist has made his choice, too: in the Republican Senate primary in Florida, Frist endorsed Mel Martinez, a millionaire trial lawyer.
No matter. Frist continued to press his charge, telling the story of a Ft. Lauderdale doctor who he said was forced to give up his medical liability insurance when the costs grew too high. Frist expressed concern that the hospital where the doctor works, Ft. Lauderdale's Broward General, might be forced to close its emergency room because of all those expensive lawsuits by rich trial lawyers. "That hospital has the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the region," Frist said. "What if it closes?" But Vicki Martin, a spokesperson for Broward General, told Salon Wednesday that she is unaware of any discussion about closing the hospital's trauma center. And Frist's claim that Broward General has "the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the region?" That's false, too. There are at least two others, and one of them, Hollywood's Memorial Regional Hospital, is less than 10 miles away.
The Republicans paid tribute to Ronald Reagan Wednesday night, and they've talked a lot this week about the lessons he taught them. They've surely taken one to heart. It was the late president, after all, who once said: "Facts are stupid things."
The truth isn't out there
From Dick Cheney on down, the Republican convention's speakers haven't let the facts get in the way of their partisan ferocity.
By Tim Grieve
Sept. 2, 2004 NEW YORK -- Arnold Schwarzenegger told adoring Republican delegates this week that the Democrats should have called their Boston convention "True Lies." But in speech after speech inside Madison Square Garden, Schwarzenegger's Republican colleagues have shown themselves to be truth-challenged. On big points and small, in policy arguments and personal anecdotes, Republican convention speakers have misrepresented, misconstrued, dissembled and dipsy-doodled. You can argue that they weren't lying, exactly, but you can't say they told the whole truth, either.
Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia delivered the Republicans' keynote address Wednesday night, and he spent a good portion of it railing against Kerry for voting against the "very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the war on terror." What Miller didn't say: Many Republicans voted against those same weapons systems.
"America needs to know the facts," Miller said, but he failed to mention a few of them. Miller told the delegates that Kerry voted against production of the F-14 and F-15 fighters and the Apache helicopter, but he didn't say that Dick Cheney, as defense secretary, proposed eliminating both of them, too. Miller criticized Kerry for voting against the B-2 bomber, but he didn't say that President George H.W. Bush also proposed an end to the B-2 bomber program.
In his 1992 State of the Union Address, Bush said he supported such cuts "with confidence" based on the recommendations of his Secretary of Defense: Dick Cheney. With the Cold War over, Bush said, failing to cut defense spending would be "insensible to progress."
That's not how Miller described the cuts Wednesday night. He said Kerry's record on defense spending suggests that he wants to arm U.S. troops with "spitballs." Miller, who was introduced as the "conscience of the Democratic Party," didn't see fit to mention that he and Kerry both voted in 2002 for the largest military spending increase in two decades -- a defense bill that Republican Senator John Warner said would "help to ensure that our military has the tools it needs to defend our nation."
Miller and the Bush campaign plainly know the truth about what he was saying -- the Annenberg Public Policy Center and any number of others have called the Republicans on their misleading argument about Kerry's votes on weapons systems. But adherence to the truth wasn't Miller's strong suit Wednesday night.
Miller said that Kerry has made it clear that he would never "use military force without U.N. approval," and that he would let "Paris decide when America needs defending." In fact, what Kerry said in his Boston convention speech was this: "I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security."
Miller's anti-Kerry rant wasn't the only convention speech in which Republicans misrepresented Kerry's statements or his Senate record. In his somniferous speech Wednesday night, Cheney mocked Kerry for saying that the United States should fight a "more sensitive war on terror, as though al-Qaida will be impressed by our softer side." But Kerry has not suggested a show of sensitivity toward al-Qaida; he said that America should fight a "more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history."
With delegates shouting "flip-flop, flip-flop," Cheney blasted Kerry for supporting the "No Child Left Behind" legislation and then opposing it. In fact, Kerry supports No Child Left Behind but argues that the Bush administration has failed to provide promised funding for it. He mocked Kerry for voting for and then against the $87 billion supplemental funding bill for Iraq, but he didn't explain that Kerry voted on two different proposals -- one that would have paid for the $87 billion by rolling back tax cuts for the rich, and one which simply added the $87 billion to the federal deficit.
Sill, Cheney stayed away from most of the whoppers he tells on the campaign trail. He didn't repeat the phony charge he made last month in Minnesota -- that Kerry has the most liberal lifetime voting record of any current Senator. But Cheney didn't have to work hard to misrepresent Kerry's positions and his record; other convention speakers carried that water for him.
Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey told delegates Wednesday evening that John Kerry "can't win by telling us the truth," but then she immediately fudged the facts herself. In a claim that has been refuted so often that even Cheney doesn't make it anymore, Healey told the delegates: "The truth is that John Kerry -- not Ted Kennedy -- is the most liberal Senator in the United States."
But that's not the truth, really. Earlier this year, the National Journal identified Kerry as the senator with the most liberal voting record in 2003 -- a year in which Kerry missed so many votes while campaigning that the National Journal didn't even apply two of its three measures of "liberalness" to him.
When the magazine looked at the more meaningful lifetime voting records of current sitting senators, Kerry wasn't the most liberal one -- and it wasn't even close. Ten other senators have lifetime liberal scores higher than Kerry's -- and, yes, Ted Kennedy is among them.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney continued the home-state slam Wednesday, claiming that Kerry had voted for "tax hikes 98 times." The Bush campaign made the same claim in a television ad released last week, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center has already shot it down.
The problem with the "98 times" claim is the Republicans' fuzzy math. While their campaign calculus is getting better -- in March, the President claimed that Kerry "voted over 350 times for higher taxes on the American people" -- the Republicans' calculation repeatedly miscounts and mischaracterizes Kerry's votes.
Annenberg explains that 43 of the 98 "tax increase" votes were actually votes on budget resolutions that did not, in and of themselves, raise taxes. Moreover, in several instances, the total of 98 includes multiple votes on the same piece of legislation: By the GOP's math, Kerry's support for President Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction package as it wound its way through Congress should count as 16 separate votes to raise taxes. Kerry gets dinged six times for a single 1996 budget resolution, seven times for a 1997 budget resolution, and six more times for supporting a proposal to raise the cigarette tax. That proposal was sponsored by Sen. John McCain -- a Republican.
Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele also took Kerry to task for sharing views with Republicans. Steele criticized Kerry for proposing a $6 billion cut in intelligence funding "just a year after the first attack on the World Trade Center." What Steele didn't say: Three months before Kerry made his proposal, Rep. Porter Goss -- Bush's pick to be the new CIA chief -- proposed a much larger cut in intelligence funding. Neither Goss' proposal nor Kerry's passed. But as Annenberg has noted, a Republican proposal to cut $1 billion from the intelligence budget passed on a voice vote the same year.
While Republicans have aimed most of their truth-stretching at Kerry, they have also engaged in the occasional embellishment to bolster Bush's image as a resolute leader. On the convention's opening night, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called Bush "a leader who is willing to stick with difficult decisions even as public opinion shifts." On the second night, Schwarzenegger said that Bush is a "leader who doesn't flinch, doesn't waver, does not back down." While it's true that Bush has stuck stubbornly to some of his failed policies -- until this week, he couldn't bring himself to admit any mistakes in Iraq -- just as often he has crumbled when public opinion has turned against his views.
Bush initially opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, then changed his mind when it was clear the votes were against him. He opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission, then supported it. He opposed a congressional investigation into the intelligence failures that led to the war in Iraq, then supported it.
The president who was praised so often this week for his "unflinching" war on terror once said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive", then said that he didn't really care about finding him. The president who never wavers used to say that America will win the war on terror; over the weekend, he said "I don't think we can ever win it"; over the last week, he's been explaining that he didn't really mean what he said when he said it.
The flip-flops don't fit the image Karl Rove has crafted for Bush, so the convention speakers have simply ignored them. In their place, they've told stories suggesting that Bush has shown "courage" by appearing in photo ops -- grabbing that megaphone at Ground Zero, eating turkey with the troops in Baghdad -- and by standing up to public opinion. Schwarzenegger said: "The President didn't go into Iraq because the polls told him it was popular. As a matter of fact, the polls said just the opposite."
But as a matter of fact, that's not a fact. In a CBS/New York Times poll released on March 6, 2003 -- 11 days before Bush gave his final ultimatum to Saddam Hussein -- 69 percent of the respondents said they approved of U.S. military action to remove Hussein from power. While the White House surely helped shape public opinion -- by misrepresenting intelligence, by incessantly linking Saddam Hussein and 9/11, by predicting that American soldiers would be "greeted as liberators" -- the president didn't buck public opinion when he went to war.
On Tuesday night, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist tried to make Bush look like a strong leader on domestic issues, saying that he would stand up to the trial lawyers who are driving up the costs of healthcare. Repeating a line used by Bush himself, Frist declared: "Let's be clear. You can no longer be both pro-patient and pro-trial lawyer." He said that Kerry has "made his choice" by choosing Edwards as his running mate. But Frist has made his choice, too: in the Republican Senate primary in Florida, Frist endorsed Mel Martinez, a millionaire trial lawyer.
No matter. Frist continued to press his charge, telling the story of a Ft. Lauderdale doctor who he said was forced to give up his medical liability insurance when the costs grew too high. Frist expressed concern that the hospital where the doctor works, Ft. Lauderdale's Broward General, might be forced to close its emergency room because of all those expensive lawsuits by rich trial lawyers. "That hospital has the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the region," Frist said. "What if it closes?" But Vicki Martin, a spokesperson for Broward General, told Salon Wednesday that she is unaware of any discussion about closing the hospital's trauma center. And Frist's claim that Broward General has "the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the region?" That's false, too. There are at least two others, and one of them, Hollywood's Memorial Regional Hospital, is less than 10 miles away.
The Republicans paid tribute to Ronald Reagan Wednesday night, and they've talked a lot this week about the lessons he taught them. They've surely taken one to heart. It was the late president, after all, who once said: "Facts are stupid things."
Friday, September 17, 2004
Things are getting better? I don't know how this latest news can be sugarcoated.
Baghdad Violence Leaves at Least 52 Dead
By KIM HOUSEGO, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide car bomber slammed into a line of police cars sealing off a Baghdad neighborhood Friday as American troops rounded up dozens of suspected militants, capping a day of violence across Iraq that left at least 52 dead.
Among the 63 suspects arrested were Syrians, Sudanese and Egyptians, officials said. Coalition forces say foreign fighters are playing a major role in the insurgency.
The car bombing, which killed three people and wounded 23, was the second this week targeting the capital's beleaguered police forces. The mounting violence has increased pressure on Iraqis working to restore stability in their country but seen as collaborators because of their cooperation with U.S. forces.
U.S. forces intercepted another car earlier carrying explosives as it attempted to break through a Baghdad checkpoint, the military said. When the vehicle refused to stop, troops opened fire, setting off the explosives. The two people inside the vehicle were killed and an Iraqi soldier was wounded.
The attacks came after U.S. jets pounded suspected hideouts of an al-Qaida-linked group in and around the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in Anbar province west of Baghadad, killing at least 44 people.
Also Friday, the military said insurgents killed a U.S. Marine on patrol in Anbar province. It gave no details. As of Thursday, 1,027 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq campaign, according to the Defense Department.
A half-dozen cars were blocking a bridge in central Baghdad when a car rammed into them and exploded in the middle of the parked cars, police officials said.
"I was thrown outside my car," said a policeman, Ali Jabar, who was being treated at a hospital for wounds to his face and one hand. He blamed insurgents waging a 17-month campaign to oust U.S.-led coalition forces.
"By attacking Iraqi police, they think that they will be sent to heaven, but by God's will, they are now melting in hell," Jabar said.
A wave of bombings, mortar attacks and shootings targeting police and potential recruits has killed hundreds of people nationwide since the fall of Baghdad in March 2003, as militants try to thwart efforts to build a strong Iraqi police force capable of taking over security from American troops. More than 250 people have been killed across Iraq in the past week alone.
The car exploded in the heart of one of Baghdad's busiest commercial areas, a short distance away from the storied al-Moutanabi street, whose outdoor book market attracts large numbers on Fridays. When police fired shots to disperse the crowds, thousands of shoppers streamed from the area.
"I saw human flesh and blood in the street, then I fled," said Mouayad Shehab.
The blast left a 6-foot-wide crater and littered the area with debris, including at least five artillery shells that police said came from the suicide car. Parts of the car, believed to be an old Chevrolet Malibu, were found more than a 100 yards away, witnesses said.
The police vehicles had been deployed to help American troops seal off the area around Haifa Street, where U.S. and Iraqi forces were raiding suspected insurgent hideouts, sparking a gunbattle.
Along with the 63 arrests, security forces seized rockets, grenades and machine guns, Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said. At least 10 people were wounded in the raids, according to the Health Ministry.
West of Baghdad, hundreds of men dug mass graves to bury the dead from a wave of American airstrikes that started late Thursday and stretched into Friday in and around Fallujah. Health Ministry official Saad al-Amili said at least 44 people were killed and 27 wounded in the Fallujah strikes.
The U.S. military said intelligence reports estimated up to 60 militants may have been killed. American troops have not entered Fallujah since ending a three-week siege of the city in April, and the claim could not be verified.
Mahmoud Sheil, 50, a tribal sheik in the area, likened the killings from U.S. airstrikes in Fallujah to the slaughter of civilians under Saddam Hussein's ousted dictatorship.
"They (the Americans) say that Saddam is the man of mass graves, but they are the ones responsible for these mass graves," he said.
Blood seeped through the blankets and sheets wrapping the corpses, which were lowered into the graves in groups of four.
The U.S. military said a first series of strikes targeted a compound in a village south of Fallujah where up to 90 militants loyal to Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were believed to be hold up.
U.S. warplanes later hit a two-story house inside Fallujah that was also allegedly being used by fighters belonging to Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group.
Militants who survived the strikes in the compound sought refuge in nearby villages, but U.S. forces said they broke off an offensive to hunt them down to avoid civilian casualties.
Blood covered the floors of Fallujah General Hospital as doctors struggled to cope with a flood of casualties, many brought to the hospital in private cars. Relatives pounded their chests in grief and denounced the United States.
Religious leaders switched on loudspeakers at the Fallujah mosque, calling on residents to donate blood and chanting: "God is great."
As night fell, a U.S. jet carried out another strike on the city, firing a missile at a house in the central Dhubat neighborhood that the military said was an al-Zarqawi hideout. At least three bodies were visible at the scene.
Insurgents have only strengthened their grip on Fallujah since the April siege ended, regularly mounting attacks against Marine positions and military convoys on the city's outskirts.
In other developments Friday:
_ British troops took control of the offices of Muqtada al-Sadr in the southern city of Basra on Friday after clashing with militants loyal to the rebel cleric, witnesses said. An Associated Press reporter saw British forces storm the offices. A British military spokesman said one British soldier was wounded in the clashes, but he was unable to confirm the building had been seized.
_ In the north, the governor of Salahuddin province said his convoy came under attack Friday near Tikrit, Saddam's home town. "I escaped today from an assassination attempt," said Gov. Hamad Hamoud Shagtti.
_ A U.S. delegation headed by Alan Larson, undersecretary of state for economic affairs, arrived in Baghdad for two days of talks with Iraqi officials on economic issues, including debt rescheduling.
_ Two Americans abducted this week by Iraqi gunmen were identified as Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong and a Briton seized with them was identified as Kenneth Bigley. They are among more than 100 foreigners kidnapped in Iraq.
___
Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report from Baghdad.
Baghdad Violence Leaves at Least 52 Dead
By KIM HOUSEGO, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide car bomber slammed into a line of police cars sealing off a Baghdad neighborhood Friday as American troops rounded up dozens of suspected militants, capping a day of violence across Iraq that left at least 52 dead.
Among the 63 suspects arrested were Syrians, Sudanese and Egyptians, officials said. Coalition forces say foreign fighters are playing a major role in the insurgency.
The car bombing, which killed three people and wounded 23, was the second this week targeting the capital's beleaguered police forces. The mounting violence has increased pressure on Iraqis working to restore stability in their country but seen as collaborators because of their cooperation with U.S. forces.
U.S. forces intercepted another car earlier carrying explosives as it attempted to break through a Baghdad checkpoint, the military said. When the vehicle refused to stop, troops opened fire, setting off the explosives. The two people inside the vehicle were killed and an Iraqi soldier was wounded.
The attacks came after U.S. jets pounded suspected hideouts of an al-Qaida-linked group in and around the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in Anbar province west of Baghadad, killing at least 44 people.
Also Friday, the military said insurgents killed a U.S. Marine on patrol in Anbar province. It gave no details. As of Thursday, 1,027 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq campaign, according to the Defense Department.
A half-dozen cars were blocking a bridge in central Baghdad when a car rammed into them and exploded in the middle of the parked cars, police officials said.
"I was thrown outside my car," said a policeman, Ali Jabar, who was being treated at a hospital for wounds to his face and one hand. He blamed insurgents waging a 17-month campaign to oust U.S.-led coalition forces.
"By attacking Iraqi police, they think that they will be sent to heaven, but by God's will, they are now melting in hell," Jabar said.
A wave of bombings, mortar attacks and shootings targeting police and potential recruits has killed hundreds of people nationwide since the fall of Baghdad in March 2003, as militants try to thwart efforts to build a strong Iraqi police force capable of taking over security from American troops. More than 250 people have been killed across Iraq in the past week alone.
The car exploded in the heart of one of Baghdad's busiest commercial areas, a short distance away from the storied al-Moutanabi street, whose outdoor book market attracts large numbers on Fridays. When police fired shots to disperse the crowds, thousands of shoppers streamed from the area.
"I saw human flesh and blood in the street, then I fled," said Mouayad Shehab.
The blast left a 6-foot-wide crater and littered the area with debris, including at least five artillery shells that police said came from the suicide car. Parts of the car, believed to be an old Chevrolet Malibu, were found more than a 100 yards away, witnesses said.
The police vehicles had been deployed to help American troops seal off the area around Haifa Street, where U.S. and Iraqi forces were raiding suspected insurgent hideouts, sparking a gunbattle.
Along with the 63 arrests, security forces seized rockets, grenades and machine guns, Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said. At least 10 people were wounded in the raids, according to the Health Ministry.
West of Baghdad, hundreds of men dug mass graves to bury the dead from a wave of American airstrikes that started late Thursday and stretched into Friday in and around Fallujah. Health Ministry official Saad al-Amili said at least 44 people were killed and 27 wounded in the Fallujah strikes.
The U.S. military said intelligence reports estimated up to 60 militants may have been killed. American troops have not entered Fallujah since ending a three-week siege of the city in April, and the claim could not be verified.
Mahmoud Sheil, 50, a tribal sheik in the area, likened the killings from U.S. airstrikes in Fallujah to the slaughter of civilians under Saddam Hussein's ousted dictatorship.
"They (the Americans) say that Saddam is the man of mass graves, but they are the ones responsible for these mass graves," he said.
Blood seeped through the blankets and sheets wrapping the corpses, which were lowered into the graves in groups of four.
The U.S. military said a first series of strikes targeted a compound in a village south of Fallujah where up to 90 militants loyal to Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were believed to be hold up.
U.S. warplanes later hit a two-story house inside Fallujah that was also allegedly being used by fighters belonging to Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group.
Militants who survived the strikes in the compound sought refuge in nearby villages, but U.S. forces said they broke off an offensive to hunt them down to avoid civilian casualties.
Blood covered the floors of Fallujah General Hospital as doctors struggled to cope with a flood of casualties, many brought to the hospital in private cars. Relatives pounded their chests in grief and denounced the United States.
Religious leaders switched on loudspeakers at the Fallujah mosque, calling on residents to donate blood and chanting: "God is great."
As night fell, a U.S. jet carried out another strike on the city, firing a missile at a house in the central Dhubat neighborhood that the military said was an al-Zarqawi hideout. At least three bodies were visible at the scene.
Insurgents have only strengthened their grip on Fallujah since the April siege ended, regularly mounting attacks against Marine positions and military convoys on the city's outskirts.
In other developments Friday:
_ British troops took control of the offices of Muqtada al-Sadr in the southern city of Basra on Friday after clashing with militants loyal to the rebel cleric, witnesses said. An Associated Press reporter saw British forces storm the offices. A British military spokesman said one British soldier was wounded in the clashes, but he was unable to confirm the building had been seized.
_ In the north, the governor of Salahuddin province said his convoy came under attack Friday near Tikrit, Saddam's home town. "I escaped today from an assassination attempt," said Gov. Hamad Hamoud Shagtti.
_ A U.S. delegation headed by Alan Larson, undersecretary of state for economic affairs, arrived in Baghdad for two days of talks with Iraqi officials on economic issues, including debt rescheduling.
_ Two Americans abducted this week by Iraqi gunmen were identified as Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong and a Briton seized with them was identified as Kenneth Bigley. They are among more than 100 foreigners kidnapped in Iraq.
___
Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report from Baghdad.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Iraq war illegal, says Annan
United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan says the United States decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 was "illegal".
Australia was a key supporter of the war on Iraq and sent troops to joined the United States-led invasion last year.
Mr Annan's comments are likely to reignite debate over whether US President George W Bush, Prime Minister John Howard and British Prime Minister Tony Blair acted within the bounds of international law by failing to get a final UN Security Council resolution on Iraq.
Speaking in an interview with BBC World Service radio, Mr Annan says the UN Security Council should have issued a second resolution, if a US-led invasion of Iraq was to be allowed.
"I'm one of those who believe that there should have been a second resolution," he said.
"Yes, if you wish. I've indicated that it was not in conformity with the UN Charter from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal."
The UN Charter is one of the cornerstones of international law.
Mr Annan says that given the current level of violence and unrest, it is unlikely that Iraq would be able to hold credible elections as planned in January 2005.
"I think there have been lessons for the US and lessons for the UN and other member states," he said.
"I think that, in the end, everybody's concluded that it is best to work together with our allies and through the UN to deal with some of these issues.
"I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time...without UN approval and much broader support from the international community."
The council had adopted a number of resolutions over the years to compel Saddam Hussein to abandon the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
The final resolution was adopted in November 2002, when UN inspectors re-entered Iraq, warning the Iraqi regime of "serious consequences" if it was found to be in material breach of the earlier resolutions.
Mr Annan says the decision on whether to act on Iraq should have been made by the UN.
"It was up to the Security Council to approve or determine what those consequences should be," he said.
Mr Annan told a news conference in The Hague, Netherlands, shortly before the invasion that if the United States took military action without Security Council approval "it would not be in conformity with the Charter".
The United States and Britain withdrew a draft resolution in the council in mid-March after it was clear there were not enough votes.
France had threatened to veto the draft if UN inspectors were not given more time to account for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Source: ABC News Online
United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan says the United States decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 was "illegal".
Australia was a key supporter of the war on Iraq and sent troops to joined the United States-led invasion last year.
Mr Annan's comments are likely to reignite debate over whether US President George W Bush, Prime Minister John Howard and British Prime Minister Tony Blair acted within the bounds of international law by failing to get a final UN Security Council resolution on Iraq.
Speaking in an interview with BBC World Service radio, Mr Annan says the UN Security Council should have issued a second resolution, if a US-led invasion of Iraq was to be allowed.
"I'm one of those who believe that there should have been a second resolution," he said.
"Yes, if you wish. I've indicated that it was not in conformity with the UN Charter from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal."
The UN Charter is one of the cornerstones of international law.
Mr Annan says that given the current level of violence and unrest, it is unlikely that Iraq would be able to hold credible elections as planned in January 2005.
"I think there have been lessons for the US and lessons for the UN and other member states," he said.
"I think that, in the end, everybody's concluded that it is best to work together with our allies and through the UN to deal with some of these issues.
"I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time...without UN approval and much broader support from the international community."
The council had adopted a number of resolutions over the years to compel Saddam Hussein to abandon the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
The final resolution was adopted in November 2002, when UN inspectors re-entered Iraq, warning the Iraqi regime of "serious consequences" if it was found to be in material breach of the earlier resolutions.
Mr Annan says the decision on whether to act on Iraq should have been made by the UN.
"It was up to the Security Council to approve or determine what those consequences should be," he said.
Mr Annan told a news conference in The Hague, Netherlands, shortly before the invasion that if the United States took military action without Security Council approval "it would not be in conformity with the Charter".
The United States and Britain withdrew a draft resolution in the council in mid-March after it was clear there were not enough votes.
France had threatened to veto the draft if UN inspectors were not given more time to account for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Source: ABC News Online
Far graver than Vietnam
Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday September 16, 2004
The Guardian
'Bring them on!" President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then, 812 American soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day, in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how he is "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is succeeding," he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.
But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."
Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."
Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."
W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there - said: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency". According to Terrill, the anti-US insurgency, centred in the Sunni triangle, and holding several cities and towns - including Fallujah - is expanding and becoming more capable as a consequence of US policy.
"We have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."
After the killing of four US contractors in Fallujah, the marines besieged the city for three weeks in April - the watershed event for the insurgency. "I think the president ordered the attack on Fallujah," said General Hoare. "I asked a three-star marine general who gave the order to go to Fallujah and he wouldn't tell me. I came to the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House." Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist radicals gained control, using the city as a base.
"If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a non-Islamic power it becomes a religious requirement to resist that occupation," Terrill explained. "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators." He describes the religious imagery common now in Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: "There's talk of angels and the Prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents."
"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."
General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."
Terrill believes that any sustained US military offensive against the no-go areas "could become so controversial that members of the Iraqi government would feel compelled to resign". Thus, an attempted military solution would destroy the slightest remaining political legitimacy. "If we leave and there's no civil war, that's a victory."
General Hoare believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it - after the election. The signs are all there."
He compares any such planned attack to the late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Asad's razing of the rebel city of Hama. "You could flatten it," said Hoare. "US military forces would prevail, casualties would be high, there would be inconclusive results with respect to the bad guys, their leadership would escape, and civilians would be caught in the middle. I hate that phrase collateral damage. And they talked about dancing in the street, a beacon for democracy."
General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."
Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday September 16, 2004
The Guardian
'Bring them on!" President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then, 812 American soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day, in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how he is "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is succeeding," he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.
But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."
Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."
Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."
W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there - said: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency". According to Terrill, the anti-US insurgency, centred in the Sunni triangle, and holding several cities and towns - including Fallujah - is expanding and becoming more capable as a consequence of US policy.
"We have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."
After the killing of four US contractors in Fallujah, the marines besieged the city for three weeks in April - the watershed event for the insurgency. "I think the president ordered the attack on Fallujah," said General Hoare. "I asked a three-star marine general who gave the order to go to Fallujah and he wouldn't tell me. I came to the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House." Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist radicals gained control, using the city as a base.
"If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a non-Islamic power it becomes a religious requirement to resist that occupation," Terrill explained. "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators." He describes the religious imagery common now in Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: "There's talk of angels and the Prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents."
"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."
General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."
Terrill believes that any sustained US military offensive against the no-go areas "could become so controversial that members of the Iraqi government would feel compelled to resign". Thus, an attempted military solution would destroy the slightest remaining political legitimacy. "If we leave and there's no civil war, that's a victory."
General Hoare believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it - after the election. The signs are all there."
He compares any such planned attack to the late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Asad's razing of the rebel city of Hama. "You could flatten it," said Hoare. "US military forces would prevail, casualties would be high, there would be inconclusive results with respect to the bad guys, their leadership would escape, and civilians would be caught in the middle. I hate that phrase collateral damage. And they talked about dancing in the street, a beacon for democracy."
General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."
Intel Officials Have Bleak View for Iraq
Thu Sep 16
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The National Intelligence Council presented President Bush
this summer with several pessimistic scenarios regarding the security situation in Iraq,
including the possibility of a civil war there before the end of 2005.
In a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate, the council looked at the political, economic and security situation in the war-torn country and determined that — at best — stability in Iraq would be tenuous, a U.S. official said late Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
At worst, the official said, were "trend lines that would point to a civil war." The official said it "would be fair" to call the document "pessimistic."
The intelligence estimate, which was prepared for Bush, considered the window of time between July and the end of 2005. But the official noted that the document draws on intelligence community assessments from January 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the subsequent deteriorating security situation there.
This latest assessment was performed by the National Intelligence Council, a group of senior intelligence officials that provides long-term strategic thinking for the entire U.S. intelligence community.
Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and the leaders of the other intelligence agencies approved the intelligence document, which runs about 50 pages.
The estimate appears to differ from the public comments of Bush and his senior aides who speak more optimistically about the prospects for a peaceful and free Iraq. "We're making progress on the ground," Bush said at his Texas ranch late last month.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment Wednesday night.
The document was first reported by The New York Times on its Web site Wednesday night.
It is the first formal assessment of Iraq since the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on the threat posed by fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
A scathing review of that estimate released this summer by the Senate Intelligence Committee found widespread intelligence failures that led to faulty assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Disclosure of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq came the same day that Senate Republicans and Democrats denounced the Bush administration's slow progress in rebuilding Iraq, saying the risks of failure are great if it doesn't act with greater urgency.
"It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing, it's now in the zone of dangerous," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., referring to figures showing only about 6 percent of the reconstruction money approved by Congress last year has been spent.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee members vented their frustrations at a hearing during which State Department officials explained the administration's request to divert $3.46 billion in reconstruction funds to security and economic development. The money was part of the $18.4 billion approved by Congress last year, mostly for public works projects.
The request comes as heavy fighting continues between U.S.-led forces and Iraqi insurgents, endangering prospects for elections scheduled for January.
"We know that the provision of adequate security up front is requisite to rapid progress on all other fronts," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ron Schlicher said.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said circumstances in Iraq have changed since last year. "It's important that you have some flexibility."
Hagel, Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and other committee members have long argued — even before the war — that administration plans for rebuilding Iraq were inadequate and based on overly optimistic assumptions that Americans would be greeted as liberators.
But the criticism from the panel's top Republicans had an extra sting coming less than seven weeks before the U.S. presidential election in which Bush's handling of the war is a top issue.
"Our committee heard blindly optimistic people from the administration prior to the war and people outside the administration — what I call the 'dancing in the street crowd' — that we just simply will be greeted with open arms," Lugar said. "The nonsense of all of that is apparent. The lack of planning is apparent."
He said the need to shift the reconstruction funds was clear in July, but the administration was slow to make the request.
State Department officials stressed areas of progress in Iraq since the United States turned over political control of Iraq to an interim government on June 28. They cited advances in generating electricity, producing oil and creating jobs.
Thu Sep 16
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The National Intelligence Council presented President Bush
this summer with several pessimistic scenarios regarding the security situation in Iraq,
including the possibility of a civil war there before the end of 2005.
In a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate, the council looked at the political, economic and security situation in the war-torn country and determined that — at best — stability in Iraq would be tenuous, a U.S. official said late Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
At worst, the official said, were "trend lines that would point to a civil war." The official said it "would be fair" to call the document "pessimistic."
The intelligence estimate, which was prepared for Bush, considered the window of time between July and the end of 2005. But the official noted that the document draws on intelligence community assessments from January 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the subsequent deteriorating security situation there.
This latest assessment was performed by the National Intelligence Council, a group of senior intelligence officials that provides long-term strategic thinking for the entire U.S. intelligence community.
Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and the leaders of the other intelligence agencies approved the intelligence document, which runs about 50 pages.
The estimate appears to differ from the public comments of Bush and his senior aides who speak more optimistically about the prospects for a peaceful and free Iraq. "We're making progress on the ground," Bush said at his Texas ranch late last month.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment Wednesday night.
The document was first reported by The New York Times on its Web site Wednesday night.
It is the first formal assessment of Iraq since the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on the threat posed by fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
A scathing review of that estimate released this summer by the Senate Intelligence Committee found widespread intelligence failures that led to faulty assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Disclosure of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq came the same day that Senate Republicans and Democrats denounced the Bush administration's slow progress in rebuilding Iraq, saying the risks of failure are great if it doesn't act with greater urgency.
"It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing, it's now in the zone of dangerous," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., referring to figures showing only about 6 percent of the reconstruction money approved by Congress last year has been spent.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee members vented their frustrations at a hearing during which State Department officials explained the administration's request to divert $3.46 billion in reconstruction funds to security and economic development. The money was part of the $18.4 billion approved by Congress last year, mostly for public works projects.
The request comes as heavy fighting continues between U.S.-led forces and Iraqi insurgents, endangering prospects for elections scheduled for January.
"We know that the provision of adequate security up front is requisite to rapid progress on all other fronts," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ron Schlicher said.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said circumstances in Iraq have changed since last year. "It's important that you have some flexibility."
Hagel, Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and other committee members have long argued — even before the war — that administration plans for rebuilding Iraq were inadequate and based on overly optimistic assumptions that Americans would be greeted as liberators.
But the criticism from the panel's top Republicans had an extra sting coming less than seven weeks before the U.S. presidential election in which Bush's handling of the war is a top issue.
"Our committee heard blindly optimistic people from the administration prior to the war and people outside the administration — what I call the 'dancing in the street crowd' — that we just simply will be greeted with open arms," Lugar said. "The nonsense of all of that is apparent. The lack of planning is apparent."
He said the need to shift the reconstruction funds was clear in July, but the administration was slow to make the request.
State Department officials stressed areas of progress in Iraq since the United States turned over political control of Iraq to an interim government on June 28. They cited advances in generating electricity, producing oil and creating jobs.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
While I am all for a person being able to change their mind, I think it is hypocritical of the Bush administration to label Kerry as a "flip-flopper" unless they can claim they never say or do anything that wouldn't be considered flip flopping. However, I don't think that is the case.
Both Candidates Often Shift Positions
Sun Sep 12
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - While working relentlessly to portray Democratic Sen. John Kerry as a "flip-flopper," President Bush has his own history of changing his position, from reversals on steel tariffs and "nation-building" to reasons for invading Iraq.
Most recently, Bush did an about-face on whether the proposed new director of national intelligence should have full budget-making powers as the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission recommended. Bush at first indicated no, then last week said yes.
Just as GOP efforts to question Kerry's military record in Vietnam helped revive nagging questions about Bush's service in the Air National Guard, the "flip flop" attacks on Kerry could boomerang against an incumbent running on his record and reputation as a straight talker.
"The guy who is the ultimate flip and flop is this sitting president," said Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware.
Yet so far Democratic efforts to paint Bush as "Flip-Flopper-in-Chief," as one Democratic news release put it, have not seemed to have had much impact on the race.
Republicans have been driving home their depiction of Kerry as a flip-flopper for months, in campaign ads, speeches and interviews. And polls suggest this line of attack is working.
Far more voters give Bush high marks for being decisive than they do Kerry. Three-fourths, 75 percent, in the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll said the president is decisive, up 7 percentage points from August, while 37 percent said Kerry is decisive, down 7 percentage points from a month ago.
Republican audiences chant "flip-flopper" when Kerry is mentioned, some political novelty stores are carrying flip-flop sandals bearing Kerry's picture, and the theme is reinforced by late-night comedians.
"Gee, I wonder if Bush will say the 'F' in John F. Kerry stands for flip-flop," said NBC's Jay Leno after Kerry last week suggested the "W" in George W. Bush stood for "wrong."
If he is a flip-flopper, Kerry has company.
_In 2000, Bush argued against new military entanglements and nation building. He's done both in Iraq.
_He opposed a Homeland Security Department, then embraced it.
_He opposed creation of an independent Sept. 11 commission, then supported it. He first refused to speak to its members, then agreed only if Vice President Dick Cheney came with him.
_Bush argued for free trade, then imposed three-year tariffs on steel imports in 2002, only to withdraw them after 21 months.
_Last month, he said he doubted the war on terror could be won, then reversed himself to say it could and would.
_A week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." But he told reporters six months later, "I truly am not that concerned about him." He did not mention bin Laden in his hour-long convention acceptance speech.
"I'm a war president," Bush told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Feb. 8. But in a July 20 speech in Iowa, he said: "Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president."
Bush keeps revising his Iraq war rationale: The need to seize Saddam Hussein 's weapons of mass destruction until none were found; liberating the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator; fighting terrorists in Iraq not at home; spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Now it's a safer America and a safer world.
"No matter how many times Senator Kerry flip-flops, we were right to make America safer by removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said last week in Missouri.
Bush has changed his positions on new Clean Air Act restrictions, protecting the Social Security surplus, tobacco subsidies, the level of assistance to help combat AIDs in Africa, campaign finance overhaul and whether to negotiate with North Korean officials.
But while Bush's policy shifts have been numerous and notable, Democrats haven't succeeded yet in tarring him as a flip flopper, said American University political scientist James Thurber.
"Kerry has made some statements about it, but he doesn't have a clear strategy for hammering back at the flip flops of the president," Thurber said.
Both Candidates Often Shift Positions
Sun Sep 12
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - While working relentlessly to portray Democratic Sen. John Kerry as a "flip-flopper," President Bush has his own history of changing his position, from reversals on steel tariffs and "nation-building" to reasons for invading Iraq.
Most recently, Bush did an about-face on whether the proposed new director of national intelligence should have full budget-making powers as the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission recommended. Bush at first indicated no, then last week said yes.
Just as GOP efforts to question Kerry's military record in Vietnam helped revive nagging questions about Bush's service in the Air National Guard, the "flip flop" attacks on Kerry could boomerang against an incumbent running on his record and reputation as a straight talker.
"The guy who is the ultimate flip and flop is this sitting president," said Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware.
Yet so far Democratic efforts to paint Bush as "Flip-Flopper-in-Chief," as one Democratic news release put it, have not seemed to have had much impact on the race.
Republicans have been driving home their depiction of Kerry as a flip-flopper for months, in campaign ads, speeches and interviews. And polls suggest this line of attack is working.
Far more voters give Bush high marks for being decisive than they do Kerry. Three-fourths, 75 percent, in the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll said the president is decisive, up 7 percentage points from August, while 37 percent said Kerry is decisive, down 7 percentage points from a month ago.
Republican audiences chant "flip-flopper" when Kerry is mentioned, some political novelty stores are carrying flip-flop sandals bearing Kerry's picture, and the theme is reinforced by late-night comedians.
"Gee, I wonder if Bush will say the 'F' in John F. Kerry stands for flip-flop," said NBC's Jay Leno after Kerry last week suggested the "W" in George W. Bush stood for "wrong."
If he is a flip-flopper, Kerry has company.
_In 2000, Bush argued against new military entanglements and nation building. He's done both in Iraq.
_He opposed a Homeland Security Department, then embraced it.
_He opposed creation of an independent Sept. 11 commission, then supported it. He first refused to speak to its members, then agreed only if Vice President Dick Cheney came with him.
_Bush argued for free trade, then imposed three-year tariffs on steel imports in 2002, only to withdraw them after 21 months.
_Last month, he said he doubted the war on terror could be won, then reversed himself to say it could and would.
_A week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." But he told reporters six months later, "I truly am not that concerned about him." He did not mention bin Laden in his hour-long convention acceptance speech.
"I'm a war president," Bush told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Feb. 8. But in a July 20 speech in Iowa, he said: "Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president."
Bush keeps revising his Iraq war rationale: The need to seize Saddam Hussein 's weapons of mass destruction until none were found; liberating the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator; fighting terrorists in Iraq not at home; spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Now it's a safer America and a safer world.
"No matter how many times Senator Kerry flip-flops, we were right to make America safer by removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said last week in Missouri.
Bush has changed his positions on new Clean Air Act restrictions, protecting the Social Security surplus, tobacco subsidies, the level of assistance to help combat AIDs in Africa, campaign finance overhaul and whether to negotiate with North Korean officials.
But while Bush's policy shifts have been numerous and notable, Democrats haven't succeeded yet in tarring him as a flip flopper, said American University political scientist James Thurber.
"Kerry has made some statements about it, but he doesn't have a clear strategy for hammering back at the flip flops of the president," Thurber said.
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Washington Post Editorial
A Failed Investigation
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A28
A DAY OF congressional hearings yesterday confirmed two glaring gaps in the Bush administration's response to hundreds of cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first is one of investigation: Major allegations of wrongdoing, including some touching on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, have yet to be explored by any arms-length probe. The second concerns accountability. Although several official panels have documented failings by senior military officers and their superiors in Washington, those responsible face no sanction of any kind, even as low-ranking personnel are criminally prosecuted. To use the phrase of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), this "is beginning to look like a bad movie."
Mr. Rumsfeld has frequently boasted of the number of Pentagon investigations into the abuse scandal and has maintained that no others are necessary. Yet the senior officer in charge of one of those probes, Gen. Paul J. Kern, told the Senate Armed Services Committee of two major areas that remain unexplored. One is the Army's accommodation of dozens of "ghost prisoners" held by the CIA and deliberately hidden from the International Red Cross in violation of the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations. Mr. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that at least one of those prisoners was held by his personal order -- an order that two former secretaries of defense, James R. Schlesinger and Harold Brown, testified was "not consistent" with international law. Gen. Kern reported that the CIA had flatly refused to provide his team with information about the ghost prisoners or their handling -- prompting Mr. McCain's acerbic comment.
The only investigation of those cases underway -- other than the internal review the CIA claims to be conducting behind its stone wall -- is assigned to the Army's inspector general, Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek. Yet Gen. Mikolashek has already delivered one report purporting to find no evidence of such detainees, and according to reporting by Elise Ackerman of the Knight Ridder news service, Gen. Mikolashek himself commanded ground forces in Afghanistan at a time when ghost detainees were being held.
Gen. Kern also acknowledged that the Pentagon has never answered the critical question of how harsh interrogation techniques promoted by Mr. Rumsfeld and other political appointees at the Pentagon and the Justice Department "found their way into documentation that we found at Abu Ghraib," the notorious prison outside Baghdad. As Sen. Lindsay O. Graham (R-S.C.) pointed out, those techniques were "way out of bounds"; "inappropriately" classified memos, he said, show that professional military lawyers opposed them from the beginning because "they violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they violated international law and they would get our people in trouble."
Nevertheless, as Gen. Kern put it, tactics that were "being debated back here in the United States found [their] way into the hard drives of the computers that we found in the prison." No investigation has clarified that "migration," or why Mr. Rumsfeld and other senior officials allowed it to occur even after the methods they proposed were determined to be improper.
Nor has the malfeasance by senior officials so far documented been attached to any formal consequences. Investigators confirmed that senior officers in the headquarters of Iraq commander in chief Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, including two generals, knew of the illegal abuses at Abu Ghraib but failed to report them to more senior commanders. Gen. Sanchez himself twice signed off on interrogation policies that, the investigators found, contained illegal methods and opened the way to abuses. Yet none of these senior officers face the courts-martial of more junior personnel, or any other sanction. Rather, the Bush administration's investigators are striving to protect them: Gen. Kern insisted that Gen. Sanchez was "a hero."
To his credit, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, refused to accept this dodge. Instead, he asked that Gen. Kern and his associates reexamine the cases of Gen. Sanchez and other senior officers, and he pledged to investigate the ghost prisoner affair. Yet it seems unlikely that a single congressional committee, buffeted by the pressures of an election year, will succeed in filling the holes it has uncovered.
The best solution is that recommended this week by eight retired generals and admirals, including a former U.S. commander in the Middle East: an independent commission like the one that which studied the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The former officers said the panel was needed "to investigate and report on the truth about all of these allegations, and to chart a course for how practices that violate the law should be addressed." As yesterday's hearings showed, the Bush administration has failed at both those tasks.
A Failed Investigation
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A28
A DAY OF congressional hearings yesterday confirmed two glaring gaps in the Bush administration's response to hundreds of cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first is one of investigation: Major allegations of wrongdoing, including some touching on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, have yet to be explored by any arms-length probe. The second concerns accountability. Although several official panels have documented failings by senior military officers and their superiors in Washington, those responsible face no sanction of any kind, even as low-ranking personnel are criminally prosecuted. To use the phrase of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), this "is beginning to look like a bad movie."
Mr. Rumsfeld has frequently boasted of the number of Pentagon investigations into the abuse scandal and has maintained that no others are necessary. Yet the senior officer in charge of one of those probes, Gen. Paul J. Kern, told the Senate Armed Services Committee of two major areas that remain unexplored. One is the Army's accommodation of dozens of "ghost prisoners" held by the CIA and deliberately hidden from the International Red Cross in violation of the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations. Mr. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that at least one of those prisoners was held by his personal order -- an order that two former secretaries of defense, James R. Schlesinger and Harold Brown, testified was "not consistent" with international law. Gen. Kern reported that the CIA had flatly refused to provide his team with information about the ghost prisoners or their handling -- prompting Mr. McCain's acerbic comment.
The only investigation of those cases underway -- other than the internal review the CIA claims to be conducting behind its stone wall -- is assigned to the Army's inspector general, Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek. Yet Gen. Mikolashek has already delivered one report purporting to find no evidence of such detainees, and according to reporting by Elise Ackerman of the Knight Ridder news service, Gen. Mikolashek himself commanded ground forces in Afghanistan at a time when ghost detainees were being held.
Gen. Kern also acknowledged that the Pentagon has never answered the critical question of how harsh interrogation techniques promoted by Mr. Rumsfeld and other political appointees at the Pentagon and the Justice Department "found their way into documentation that we found at Abu Ghraib," the notorious prison outside Baghdad. As Sen. Lindsay O. Graham (R-S.C.) pointed out, those techniques were "way out of bounds"; "inappropriately" classified memos, he said, show that professional military lawyers opposed them from the beginning because "they violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they violated international law and they would get our people in trouble."
Nevertheless, as Gen. Kern put it, tactics that were "being debated back here in the United States found [their] way into the hard drives of the computers that we found in the prison." No investigation has clarified that "migration," or why Mr. Rumsfeld and other senior officials allowed it to occur even after the methods they proposed were determined to be improper.
Nor has the malfeasance by senior officials so far documented been attached to any formal consequences. Investigators confirmed that senior officers in the headquarters of Iraq commander in chief Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, including two generals, knew of the illegal abuses at Abu Ghraib but failed to report them to more senior commanders. Gen. Sanchez himself twice signed off on interrogation policies that, the investigators found, contained illegal methods and opened the way to abuses. Yet none of these senior officers face the courts-martial of more junior personnel, or any other sanction. Rather, the Bush administration's investigators are striving to protect them: Gen. Kern insisted that Gen. Sanchez was "a hero."
To his credit, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, refused to accept this dodge. Instead, he asked that Gen. Kern and his associates reexamine the cases of Gen. Sanchez and other senior officers, and he pledged to investigate the ghost prisoner affair. Yet it seems unlikely that a single congressional committee, buffeted by the pressures of an election year, will succeed in filling the holes it has uncovered.
The best solution is that recommended this week by eight retired generals and admirals, including a former U.S. commander in the Middle East: an independent commission like the one that which studied the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The former officers said the panel was needed "to investigate and report on the truth about all of these allegations, and to chart a course for how practices that violate the law should be addressed." As yesterday's hearings showed, the Bush administration has failed at both those tasks.
Friday, September 10, 2004
Study: Bush Judges Most Conservative on Rights
Thu Sep 9, 5:14 PM ET
By Jeff Franks
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A study of thousands of federal court cases has found that judges appointed by President Bush are the most conservative on record in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties.
The study's authors say the re-election of Bush would give U.S. courts a strong rightward tilt that could last for years.
"If Bush wins re-election you're going to have a very conservative judiciary," University of Houston political scientist Robert Carp said on Thursday. "An average president puts in about a third of the federal judiciary in two terms, so this really is a watershed year in terms of what happens."
Carp along with Kenneth Manning of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and Ronald Stidham from Appalachian State University looked at federal court decisions in the Federal Supplement's database of 70,000 cases and categorized them as "liberal" or "conservative" based on case content.
They found that Republican appointees issued liberal rulings in about a third of their cases while Democrats did so 45 percent to 50 percent of the time.
But in civil rights and civil liberties cases -- abortion, gay rights, freedom of speech, right to privacy, race relations, for example -- Bush judges made liberal decisions only 26.5 percent of the time.
That was well below 37.9 percent for appointees of Richard Nixon, 32.3 percent for Ronald Reagan and 32.2 percent for George H.W. Bush, all fellow Republican presidents.
Appointees of Democrats Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton gave liberal rulings, respectively, 58.1 percent, 51.3 percent and 42 percent of the time in the same types of cases.
"George W. Bush is the most conservative president that we have data for," Karp said. "In civil rights and liberties cases, his judges were 25 percent more conservative than those of other Republicans."
When Bush became president in January 2001, following two terms in office by Democrat Clinton, 51 percent of federal judges were Democratic appointees versus 49 percent Republican.
On average, Carp said, presidents get to name about 17 percent of the federal judiciary during a four-year term. Sometimes the number is higher -- Reagan named about 50 percent of the judges during his eight years in office, and the study said his "impact on the judicial branch continues to be substantial."
The study was published in Judicature, the publication of the American Judicature Society, a nonpartisan organization of judges, lawyers and others involved in justice administration.
Thu Sep 9, 5:14 PM ET
By Jeff Franks
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A study of thousands of federal court cases has found that judges appointed by President Bush are the most conservative on record in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties.
The study's authors say the re-election of Bush would give U.S. courts a strong rightward tilt that could last for years.
"If Bush wins re-election you're going to have a very conservative judiciary," University of Houston political scientist Robert Carp said on Thursday. "An average president puts in about a third of the federal judiciary in two terms, so this really is a watershed year in terms of what happens."
Carp along with Kenneth Manning of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and Ronald Stidham from Appalachian State University looked at federal court decisions in the Federal Supplement's database of 70,000 cases and categorized them as "liberal" or "conservative" based on case content.
They found that Republican appointees issued liberal rulings in about a third of their cases while Democrats did so 45 percent to 50 percent of the time.
But in civil rights and civil liberties cases -- abortion, gay rights, freedom of speech, right to privacy, race relations, for example -- Bush judges made liberal decisions only 26.5 percent of the time.
That was well below 37.9 percent for appointees of Richard Nixon, 32.3 percent for Ronald Reagan and 32.2 percent for George H.W. Bush, all fellow Republican presidents.
Appointees of Democrats Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton gave liberal rulings, respectively, 58.1 percent, 51.3 percent and 42 percent of the time in the same types of cases.
"George W. Bush is the most conservative president that we have data for," Karp said. "In civil rights and liberties cases, his judges were 25 percent more conservative than those of other Republicans."
When Bush became president in January 2001, following two terms in office by Democrat Clinton, 51 percent of federal judges were Democratic appointees versus 49 percent Republican.
On average, Carp said, presidents get to name about 17 percent of the federal judiciary during a four-year term. Sometimes the number is higher -- Reagan named about 50 percent of the judges during his eight years in office, and the study said his "impact on the judicial branch continues to be substantial."
The study was published in Judicature, the publication of the American Judicature Society, a nonpartisan organization of judges, lawyers and others involved in justice administration.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Don't ever, ever speak for me Mr. Rumsfeld.
As the American casualties in the Iraq conflict pass 1000 Rumsfeld is quoted as saying:
"U.S. enemies should not underestimate the willingness of the American people and its coalition allies to suffer casualties in Iraq and elsewhere."
I seriously take offense to this. I am NOT willing to see our soldiers and civilians die for their bungled invasion, their lies, and their corporate greed.
At least Kerry had these compassionate words:
"Today marks a tragic milestone in the war in Iraq. More than one thousand of Americas sons and daughters have made the ultimate sacrifice. Our nation honors their service and joins with their families and loved ones in mourning their loss.
"We must never forget the price they have paid. And we must meet our sacred obligation to all our troops to do all we can to make the right decisions in Iraq so that we can bring them home as soon as possible."
Additionally:
The U.S. military has not reported overall Iraqi deaths. The Iraqi Health Ministry started counting the dead only in April when heavy fighting broke out in Fallujah and Najaf. However, conservative estimates by private groups place the Iraqi toll at at least 10,000 — or 10 times the number of U.S. military deaths.
"It is difficult to establish the right number of casualties," said Amnesty International's Middle East spokeswoman, Nicole Choueiry. She added that "it was the job of the occupation power to keep track of the numbers but the Americans failed to do so."
Source: Associated Press
As the American casualties in the Iraq conflict pass 1000 Rumsfeld is quoted as saying:
"U.S. enemies should not underestimate the willingness of the American people and its coalition allies to suffer casualties in Iraq and elsewhere."
I seriously take offense to this. I am NOT willing to see our soldiers and civilians die for their bungled invasion, their lies, and their corporate greed.
At least Kerry had these compassionate words:
"Today marks a tragic milestone in the war in Iraq. More than one thousand of Americas sons and daughters have made the ultimate sacrifice. Our nation honors their service and joins with their families and loved ones in mourning their loss.
"We must never forget the price they have paid. And we must meet our sacred obligation to all our troops to do all we can to make the right decisions in Iraq so that we can bring them home as soon as possible."
Additionally:
The U.S. military has not reported overall Iraqi deaths. The Iraqi Health Ministry started counting the dead only in April when heavy fighting broke out in Fallujah and Najaf. However, conservative estimates by private groups place the Iraqi toll at at least 10,000 — or 10 times the number of U.S. military deaths.
"It is difficult to establish the right number of casualties," said Amnesty International's Middle East spokeswoman, Nicole Choueiry. She added that "it was the job of the occupation power to keep track of the numbers but the Americans failed to do so."
Source: Associated Press
Monday, September 06, 2004
Here's what Georgie was doing during the Vietnam war, while Kerry was patrolling in a combat zone and winning medals of honor:
George W. Bush's missing year
The widow of a Bush family confidant says her husband gave the future president an Alabama Senate campaign job as a favor to his worried father. Did they see him do any National Guard service? "Good lord, no."
By Mary Jacoby
Sept. 2, 2004 NEW YORK -- Before there was Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison. In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush?
"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."
Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.
Leaving the election-night "celebration," Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he'd yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he'd rented in Montgomery trashed -- the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. "He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people's possessions," Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid. And a month later, in December, during a visit to his parents' home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go "mano a mano," as has often been reported.
Looks like his daughters take after their father (he has obviously set a really good example):
Bush twins swill vodka, stiff the help
Mayor Michael Bloomberg hailed the Republican National Convention as an economic boon to the city, but it turned out to be a bust for the poor saps stuck serving the tight-fisted Bush girls. According to the New York Post’s Page Six, the debaucherous twins spent all night Wednesday getting trashed at the Manhattan club Avalon, and then stiffed the help. As the Post reports, "They [and their entourage of about 25] drank $4,500 dollars worth of drinks — bottles and bottles of vodka,' says a club insider. 'Then, having been comped all the alcohol, they left a $48 tip. We thought 1 per cent was kind of outrageous, considering they are the president's daughters.'"
Leave aside what this says about the girls’ respect for working people. These kids and their friends swilled $180 worth of booze per person. A galloping sense of entitlement, apparently, isn’t the only thing that runs in the Bush family.
-- Michelle Goldberg
Source Salon.com
George W. Bush's missing year
The widow of a Bush family confidant says her husband gave the future president an Alabama Senate campaign job as a favor to his worried father. Did they see him do any National Guard service? "Good lord, no."
By Mary Jacoby
Sept. 2, 2004 NEW YORK -- Before there was Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison. In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush?
"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."
Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.
Leaving the election-night "celebration," Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he'd yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he'd rented in Montgomery trashed -- the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. "He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people's possessions," Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid. And a month later, in December, during a visit to his parents' home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go "mano a mano," as has often been reported.
Looks like his daughters take after their father (he has obviously set a really good example):
Bush twins swill vodka, stiff the help
Mayor Michael Bloomberg hailed the Republican National Convention as an economic boon to the city, but it turned out to be a bust for the poor saps stuck serving the tight-fisted Bush girls. According to the New York Post’s Page Six, the debaucherous twins spent all night Wednesday getting trashed at the Manhattan club Avalon, and then stiffed the help. As the Post reports, "They [and their entourage of about 25] drank $4,500 dollars worth of drinks — bottles and bottles of vodka,' says a club insider. 'Then, having been comped all the alcohol, they left a $48 tip. We thought 1 per cent was kind of outrageous, considering they are the president's daughters.'"
Leave aside what this says about the girls’ respect for working people. These kids and their friends swilled $180 worth of booze per person. A galloping sense of entitlement, apparently, isn’t the only thing that runs in the Bush family.
-- Michelle Goldberg
Source Salon.com
Why should this soldier suffer for the rest of his life due to Bush's lies? This guy was there, he saw the results of Bush's illegal invasion first-hand. Is he a traitor to stand up and say it was wrong to invade on the basis of Bush's lies?
Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'
By Paul Rockwell -- Special to The BeePublished 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 16, 2004
"We forget what war is about, what it does to those who wage it and those who suffer from it. Those who hate war the most, I have often found, are veterans who know it."
- Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter and author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"
For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved.
Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you sent to Iraq?
A: I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion.
Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine?
A: The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn't see any humanitarian support.
Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines?
A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there's many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So we lit them up.
Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?
A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like a ton of bricks.
Q: He spoke English?
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right?
A: Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped on them. It said, "Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons." That's what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren't in uniform. We never found any weapons.
Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties?
A: Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch.
Q: Over what period did all this take place?
A: During the invasion of Baghdad.
'We lit him up pretty good'
Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint "light-ups"?
A: Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn't stop. With us being trigger happy, we didn't really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives.
Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case?
A: Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot.
Q: A demonstration? Where?
A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn't. They were only holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: "Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it."
Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic?
A: Both.
Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out?
A: Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government.
Q: What kind of firepower was employed?
A: M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns.
Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out?
A: Oh, yeah. Well, I had a "mercy" on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, "Don't shoot." Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was running with half of his foot cut off.
Q: After you lit up the demonstration, how long before the next incident?
A: Probably about one or two hours. This is another thing, too. I am so glad I am talking with you, because I suppressed all of this.
Q: Well, I appreciate you giving me the information, as hard as it must be to recall the painful details.
A: That's all right. It's kind of therapy for me. Because it's something that I had repressed for a long time.
Q: And the incident?
A: There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We lit him up. I don't know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came running over to where we were and said: "You all just shot a guy with his hands up." Man, I forgot about this.
Depleted uranium and cluster bombs
Q: You mention machine guns. What can you tell me about cluster bombs, or depleted uranium?
A: Depleted uranium. I know what it does. It's basically like leaving plutonium rods around. I'm 32 years old. I have 80 percent of my lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don't feel like a healthy 32-year-old.
Q: Were you in the vicinity of of depleted uranium?
A: Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. DU is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there's dust.
Q: Did you breath any dust?
A: Yeah.
Q: And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it's impacting Iraqi civilians.
A: Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem.
Q: Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with DU?
A: Not that I know of. Well, if a tank gets hit, crews are detained for a little while to make sure there are no signs or symptoms. American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds are in the ground. The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about it. Hell, I didn't even know about DU until two years ago. You know how I found out about it? I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine. I just started inquiring about it, and I said "Holy s---!"
Q: Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs?
A: I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM.
Q: What's an ICBM?
A: A multi-purpose cluster bomb.
Q: What happened?
A: He stepped on it. We didn't get to training about clusters until about a month before I left.
Q: What kind of training?
A: They told us what they looked like, and not to step on them.
Q: Were you in any areas where they were dropped?
A: Oh, yeah. They were everywhere.
Q: Dropped from the air?
A: From the air as well as artillery.
Q: Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside the cities?
A: They are used everywhere. Now if you talked to a Marine artillery officer, he would give you the runaround, the politically correct answer. But for an average grunt, they're everywhere.
Q: Including inside the towns and cities?
A: Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there were going to be ICBMs.
Q: Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They are not precise. They don't injure buildings, or hurt tanks. Only people and living things. There are a lot of undetonated duds and they go off after the battles are over.
A: Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb has a mind of its own. There's always human error. I'm going to tell you: The armed forces are in a tight spot over there. It's starting to leak out about the civilian casualties that are taking place. The Iraqis know. I keep hearing reports from my Marine buddies inside that there were 200-something civilians killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling right now to keep the raps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies.
Embedded reporters
Q: How are the embedded reporters responding?
A: I had embedded reporters in my unit, not my platoon. One we had was a South African reporter. He was scared s---less. We had an incident where one of them wanted to go home.
Q: Why?
A: It was when we started going into Baghdad. When he started seeing the civilian casualties, he started wigging out a little bit. It didn't start until we got on the outskirts of Baghdad and started taking civilian casualties.
Q: I would like to go back to the first incident, when the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that pushed you over the edge, as you put it?
A: Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: "Are you OK?" I said: "No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians." He goes: "No, today was a good day." And when he said that, I said "Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?"
Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion?
A: I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing.
Q: What changed you?
A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed.
Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops?
A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.
Showdown with superiors
Q: I understand that all the incidents - killing civilians at checkpoints, itchy fingers at the rally - weigh on you. What happened with your commanding officers? How did you deal with them?
A: There was an incident. It was right after the fall of Baghdad, when we went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had a morning meeting on the battle plan. I was not in a good mindset. All these things were going through my head - about what we were doing over there. About some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside. My lieutenant and I got into a conversation. The conversation was striking me wrong. And I lashed out. I looked at him and told him: "You know, I honestly feel that what we're doing is wrong over here. We're committing genocide."
He asked me something and I said that with the killing of civilians and the depleted uranium we're leaving over here, we're not going to have to worry about terrorists. He didn't like that. He got up and stormed off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I was talking to my commanding officer.
Q: What happened then?
A: After I talked to the top commander, I was kind of scurried away. I was basically put on house arrest. I didn't talk to other troops. I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to jeopardize them.
I want to help people. I felt strongly about it. I had to say something. When I was sent back to stateside, I went in front of the sergeant major. He's in charge of 3,500-plus Marines. "Sir," I told him, "I don't want your money. I don't want your benefits. What you did was wrong." It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie.
So, all you pro-war/pro-Bush supporters who have not seen combat, can not criticize John Kerry's actions. The president you support did NOT see combat, and he is heartless and hypocritical to send these courageous young men and women into battle to kill and DIE for his self-indulgent, self-interested, greedy, arrogant , and offensive war.
Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'
By Paul Rockwell -- Special to The BeePublished 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 16, 2004
"We forget what war is about, what it does to those who wage it and those who suffer from it. Those who hate war the most, I have often found, are veterans who know it."
- Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter and author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"
For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved.
Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you sent to Iraq?
A: I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion.
Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine?
A: The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn't see any humanitarian support.
Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines?
A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there's many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So we lit them up.
Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?
A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like a ton of bricks.
Q: He spoke English?
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right?
A: Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped on them. It said, "Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons." That's what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren't in uniform. We never found any weapons.
Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties?
A: Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch.
Q: Over what period did all this take place?
A: During the invasion of Baghdad.
'We lit him up pretty good'
Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint "light-ups"?
A: Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn't stop. With us being trigger happy, we didn't really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives.
Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case?
A: Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot.
Q: A demonstration? Where?
A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn't. They were only holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: "Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it."
Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic?
A: Both.
Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out?
A: Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government.
Q: What kind of firepower was employed?
A: M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns.
Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out?
A: Oh, yeah. Well, I had a "mercy" on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, "Don't shoot." Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was running with half of his foot cut off.
Q: After you lit up the demonstration, how long before the next incident?
A: Probably about one or two hours. This is another thing, too. I am so glad I am talking with you, because I suppressed all of this.
Q: Well, I appreciate you giving me the information, as hard as it must be to recall the painful details.
A: That's all right. It's kind of therapy for me. Because it's something that I had repressed for a long time.
Q: And the incident?
A: There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We lit him up. I don't know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came running over to where we were and said: "You all just shot a guy with his hands up." Man, I forgot about this.
Depleted uranium and cluster bombs
Q: You mention machine guns. What can you tell me about cluster bombs, or depleted uranium?
A: Depleted uranium. I know what it does. It's basically like leaving plutonium rods around. I'm 32 years old. I have 80 percent of my lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don't feel like a healthy 32-year-old.
Q: Were you in the vicinity of of depleted uranium?
A: Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. DU is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there's dust.
Q: Did you breath any dust?
A: Yeah.
Q: And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it's impacting Iraqi civilians.
A: Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem.
Q: Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with DU?
A: Not that I know of. Well, if a tank gets hit, crews are detained for a little while to make sure there are no signs or symptoms. American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds are in the ground. The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about it. Hell, I didn't even know about DU until two years ago. You know how I found out about it? I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine. I just started inquiring about it, and I said "Holy s---!"
Q: Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs?
A: I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM.
Q: What's an ICBM?
A: A multi-purpose cluster bomb.
Q: What happened?
A: He stepped on it. We didn't get to training about clusters until about a month before I left.
Q: What kind of training?
A: They told us what they looked like, and not to step on them.
Q: Were you in any areas where they were dropped?
A: Oh, yeah. They were everywhere.
Q: Dropped from the air?
A: From the air as well as artillery.
Q: Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside the cities?
A: They are used everywhere. Now if you talked to a Marine artillery officer, he would give you the runaround, the politically correct answer. But for an average grunt, they're everywhere.
Q: Including inside the towns and cities?
A: Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there were going to be ICBMs.
Q: Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They are not precise. They don't injure buildings, or hurt tanks. Only people and living things. There are a lot of undetonated duds and they go off after the battles are over.
A: Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb has a mind of its own. There's always human error. I'm going to tell you: The armed forces are in a tight spot over there. It's starting to leak out about the civilian casualties that are taking place. The Iraqis know. I keep hearing reports from my Marine buddies inside that there were 200-something civilians killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling right now to keep the raps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies.
Embedded reporters
Q: How are the embedded reporters responding?
A: I had embedded reporters in my unit, not my platoon. One we had was a South African reporter. He was scared s---less. We had an incident where one of them wanted to go home.
Q: Why?
A: It was when we started going into Baghdad. When he started seeing the civilian casualties, he started wigging out a little bit. It didn't start until we got on the outskirts of Baghdad and started taking civilian casualties.
Q: I would like to go back to the first incident, when the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that pushed you over the edge, as you put it?
A: Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: "Are you OK?" I said: "No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians." He goes: "No, today was a good day." And when he said that, I said "Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?"
Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion?
A: I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing.
Q: What changed you?
A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed.
Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops?
A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.
Showdown with superiors
Q: I understand that all the incidents - killing civilians at checkpoints, itchy fingers at the rally - weigh on you. What happened with your commanding officers? How did you deal with them?
A: There was an incident. It was right after the fall of Baghdad, when we went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had a morning meeting on the battle plan. I was not in a good mindset. All these things were going through my head - about what we were doing over there. About some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside. My lieutenant and I got into a conversation. The conversation was striking me wrong. And I lashed out. I looked at him and told him: "You know, I honestly feel that what we're doing is wrong over here. We're committing genocide."
He asked me something and I said that with the killing of civilians and the depleted uranium we're leaving over here, we're not going to have to worry about terrorists. He didn't like that. He got up and stormed off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I was talking to my commanding officer.
Q: What happened then?
A: After I talked to the top commander, I was kind of scurried away. I was basically put on house arrest. I didn't talk to other troops. I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to jeopardize them.
I want to help people. I felt strongly about it. I had to say something. When I was sent back to stateside, I went in front of the sergeant major. He's in charge of 3,500-plus Marines. "Sir," I told him, "I don't want your money. I don't want your benefits. What you did was wrong." It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie.
So, all you pro-war/pro-Bush supporters who have not seen combat, can not criticize John Kerry's actions. The president you support did NOT see combat, and he is heartless and hypocritical to send these courageous young men and women into battle to kill and DIE for his self-indulgent, self-interested, greedy, arrogant , and offensive war.
Who is the real liar about their service during the Vietnam war? Why doesn't Bush just fill in the blanks...what does he have to hide...his less than heroic service during the Vietnam war??? This deserter is running our military...how can they possibly respect him?
Bush's National Guard File Missing Records
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.
For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills.
No such records have been made public and the government told The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all records it can find.
Outside experts suggest that National Guard commanders may not have produced documentation required by their own regulations.
"One of the downfalls back then in the National Guard was that not everyone wanted to be chief of staff of the Air Force. They just wanted to fly or maintain airplanes. So the record keeping could have been better," said retired Maj. Gen. Paul A. Weaver Jr., a former head of the Air National Guard. He said the documents may not have been kept in the first place.
Challenging the government's declaration that no more documents exist, the AP identified five categories of records that should have been generated after Bush skipped his pilot's physical and missed five months of training.
"Each of these actions by any member of the National Guard should have generated the creation of many documents that have yet to be produced," AP lawyer David Schulz wrote the Justice Department Aug. 26.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said there were no other documents to explain discrepancies in Bush's files.
Military service during the Vietnam War has become an issue in the presidential election as both candidates debate the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Democrat John Kerry commanded a Navy Swift boat in Vietnam and was awarded five medals, including a Silver Star. But his heroism has been challenged in ads by some veterans who support Bush.
The president served stateside in the Air National Guard during Vietnam. Democrats have accused him of shirking his Guard service and getting favored treatment as the son of a prominent Washington figure.
The AP talked to experts unaffiliated with either campaign who have reviewed Bush's files for missing documents. They said it was not unusual for guard commanders to ignore deficiencies by junior officers such as Bush. But they said missing a physical exam, which caused him to be grounded, was not common.
"It's sort of like a code of honor that you didn't go DNF (duty not including flying)," said retired Air Force Col. Leonard Walls, who flew 181 combat missions over Vietnam. "There was a lot of pride in keeping combat-ready status."
Bush has said he fulfilled all his obligations. He was in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 to 1973 and was trained to fly F-102 fighters.
"I'm proud of my service," Bush told a rally last weekend in Lima, Ohio.
Records of Bush's service have significant gaps, starting in 1972. Bush has said he left Texas that year to work on the unsuccessful Senate campaign in Alabama of family friend Winton Blount.
The five kinds of missing files are:
_A report from the Texas Air National Guard to Bush's local draft board certifying that Bush remained in good standing. The government has released copies of those DD Form 44 documents for Bush for 1971 and earlier years but not for 1972 or 1973. Records from Bush's draft board in Houston do not show his draft status changed after he joined the guard in 1968. The AP obtained the draft board records Aug. 27 under the Freedom of Information Act.
_Records of a required investigation into why Bush lost flight status. When Bush skipped his 1972 physical, regulations required his Texas commanders to "direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination," according to the Air Force manual at the time. An investigative report was supposed to be forwarded "with the command recommendation" to Air Force officials "for final determination."
Bush's spokesmen have said he skipped the exam because he knew he would be doing desk duty in Alabama. But Bush was required to take the physical by the end of July 1972, more than a month before he won final approval to train in Alabama.
_A written acknowledgment from Bush that he had received the orders grounding him. His Texas commanders were ordered to have Bush sign such a document; but none has been released.
_Reports of formal counseling sessions Bush was required to have after missing more than three training sessions. Bush missed at least five months' worth of National Guard training in 1972. No documents have surfaced indicating Bush was counseled or had written authorization to skip that training or make it up later. Commanders did have broad discretion to allow guardsmen to make up for missed training sessions, said Weaver and Lawrence Korb, Pentagon
personnel chief during the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1985.
"If you missed it, you could make it up," said Korb, who now works for the Center for American Progress, which supports Kerry.
_A signed statement from Bush acknowledging he could be called to active duty if he did not promptly transfer to another guard unit after leaving Texas. The statement was required as part of a Vietnam-era crackdown on no-show guardsmen. Bush was approved in September 1972 to train with the Alabama unit, more than four months after he left Texas.
Bush was approved to train in September, October and November 1972 with the Alabama Air National Guard's 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group. The only record tying Bush to that unit is a dental exam at the group's Montgomery base in January 1973. No records have been released giving Bush permission to train with the 187th after November 1972.
Walls, the Air Force combat veteran, was assigned to the 187th in 1972 and 1973 to train its pilots to fly the F-4 Phantom. Walls and more than a dozen other members of the 187th say they never saw Bush. One member of the unit, retired Lt. Col. John Calhoun, has said he remembers Bush showing up for training with the 187th.
Pay records show Bush was credited for training in January, April and May 1973; other files indicate that service was outside Texas.
A May 1973 yearly evaluation from Bush's Texas unit gives the future president no ratings and stated Bush had not been seen at the Texas base since April 1972. In a directive from June 29, 1973, an Air Force personnel official pressed Bush's unit for information about his Alabama service.
"This officer should have been reassigned in May 1972," wrote Master Sgt. Daniel P. Harkness, "since he no longer is training in his AFSC (Air Force Service Category, or job title) or with his unit of assignment."
Then-Maj. Rufus G. Martin replied Nov. 12, 1973: "Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 Apr 73. Report for this period not available for administrative reasons."
By then, Texas Air National Guard officials had approved Bush's request to leave the guard to attend Harvard Business School; his last days of duty were in July 1973.
And here's some more fun:
Prominent Democrats vs. Republicans who have served in the military:
http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html
Bush's National Guard File Missing Records
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.
For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills.
No such records have been made public and the government told The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all records it can find.
Outside experts suggest that National Guard commanders may not have produced documentation required by their own regulations.
"One of the downfalls back then in the National Guard was that not everyone wanted to be chief of staff of the Air Force. They just wanted to fly or maintain airplanes. So the record keeping could have been better," said retired Maj. Gen. Paul A. Weaver Jr., a former head of the Air National Guard. He said the documents may not have been kept in the first place.
Challenging the government's declaration that no more documents exist, the AP identified five categories of records that should have been generated after Bush skipped his pilot's physical and missed five months of training.
"Each of these actions by any member of the National Guard should have generated the creation of many documents that have yet to be produced," AP lawyer David Schulz wrote the Justice Department Aug. 26.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said there were no other documents to explain discrepancies in Bush's files.
Military service during the Vietnam War has become an issue in the presidential election as both candidates debate the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Democrat John Kerry commanded a Navy Swift boat in Vietnam and was awarded five medals, including a Silver Star. But his heroism has been challenged in ads by some veterans who support Bush.
The president served stateside in the Air National Guard during Vietnam. Democrats have accused him of shirking his Guard service and getting favored treatment as the son of a prominent Washington figure.
The AP talked to experts unaffiliated with either campaign who have reviewed Bush's files for missing documents. They said it was not unusual for guard commanders to ignore deficiencies by junior officers such as Bush. But they said missing a physical exam, which caused him to be grounded, was not common.
"It's sort of like a code of honor that you didn't go DNF (duty not including flying)," said retired Air Force Col. Leonard Walls, who flew 181 combat missions over Vietnam. "There was a lot of pride in keeping combat-ready status."
Bush has said he fulfilled all his obligations. He was in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 to 1973 and was trained to fly F-102 fighters.
"I'm proud of my service," Bush told a rally last weekend in Lima, Ohio.
Records of Bush's service have significant gaps, starting in 1972. Bush has said he left Texas that year to work on the unsuccessful Senate campaign in Alabama of family friend Winton Blount.
The five kinds of missing files are:
_A report from the Texas Air National Guard to Bush's local draft board certifying that Bush remained in good standing. The government has released copies of those DD Form 44 documents for Bush for 1971 and earlier years but not for 1972 or 1973. Records from Bush's draft board in Houston do not show his draft status changed after he joined the guard in 1968. The AP obtained the draft board records Aug. 27 under the Freedom of Information Act.
_Records of a required investigation into why Bush lost flight status. When Bush skipped his 1972 physical, regulations required his Texas commanders to "direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination," according to the Air Force manual at the time. An investigative report was supposed to be forwarded "with the command recommendation" to Air Force officials "for final determination."
Bush's spokesmen have said he skipped the exam because he knew he would be doing desk duty in Alabama. But Bush was required to take the physical by the end of July 1972, more than a month before he won final approval to train in Alabama.
_A written acknowledgment from Bush that he had received the orders grounding him. His Texas commanders were ordered to have Bush sign such a document; but none has been released.
_Reports of formal counseling sessions Bush was required to have after missing more than three training sessions. Bush missed at least five months' worth of National Guard training in 1972. No documents have surfaced indicating Bush was counseled or had written authorization to skip that training or make it up later. Commanders did have broad discretion to allow guardsmen to make up for missed training sessions, said Weaver and Lawrence Korb, Pentagon
personnel chief during the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1985.
"If you missed it, you could make it up," said Korb, who now works for the Center for American Progress, which supports Kerry.
_A signed statement from Bush acknowledging he could be called to active duty if he did not promptly transfer to another guard unit after leaving Texas. The statement was required as part of a Vietnam-era crackdown on no-show guardsmen. Bush was approved in September 1972 to train with the Alabama unit, more than four months after he left Texas.
Bush was approved to train in September, October and November 1972 with the Alabama Air National Guard's 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group. The only record tying Bush to that unit is a dental exam at the group's Montgomery base in January 1973. No records have been released giving Bush permission to train with the 187th after November 1972.
Walls, the Air Force combat veteran, was assigned to the 187th in 1972 and 1973 to train its pilots to fly the F-4 Phantom. Walls and more than a dozen other members of the 187th say they never saw Bush. One member of the unit, retired Lt. Col. John Calhoun, has said he remembers Bush showing up for training with the 187th.
Pay records show Bush was credited for training in January, April and May 1973; other files indicate that service was outside Texas.
A May 1973 yearly evaluation from Bush's Texas unit gives the future president no ratings and stated Bush had not been seen at the Texas base since April 1972. In a directive from June 29, 1973, an Air Force personnel official pressed Bush's unit for information about his Alabama service.
"This officer should have been reassigned in May 1972," wrote Master Sgt. Daniel P. Harkness, "since he no longer is training in his AFSC (Air Force Service Category, or job title) or with his unit of assignment."
Then-Maj. Rufus G. Martin replied Nov. 12, 1973: "Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 Apr 73. Report for this period not available for administrative reasons."
By then, Texas Air National Guard officials had approved Bush's request to leave the guard to attend Harvard Business School; his last days of duty were in July 1973.
And here's some more fun:
Prominent Democrats vs. Republicans who have served in the military:
http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html
Sunday, September 05, 2004
Graham book: Inquiry into 9/11, Saudi ties blocked
By FRANK DAVIES
WASHINGTON - Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.
The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote.
And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.
Graham recalled this conversation at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa with Franks, then head of Central Command, who was ``looking troubled'':
``Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.''
''Excuse me?'' I asked.
''Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,'' he continued.
Graham concluded: 'Gen. Franks' mission -- which, as a good soldier, he was loyally carrying out -- was being downgraded from a war to a manhunt.''
Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October 2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would hinder the fight against al Qaeda terrorism.
He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with Rep. Porter Goss, nominated last month to be the next CIA director. According to Graham, the FBI and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers.
Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi government.
Al-Bayoumi received a monthly allowance from a contractor for Saudi Civil Aviation that jumped from $465 to $3,700 in March 2000, after he helped Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhdar -- two of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- find apartments and make contacts in San Diego, just before they began pilot training.
When the staff tried to conduct interviews in that investigation, and with an FBI informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who also helped the eventual hijackers, they were blocked by the FBI and the administration, Graham wrote.
The administration and CIA also insisted that the details about the Saudi support network that benefited two hijackers be left out of the final congressional report, Graham complained.
Bush had concluded that ''a nation-state that had aided the terrorists should not be held publicly to account,'' Graham wrote. ``It was as if the president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety.''
Saudi officials have vociferously denied any ties to the hijackers or al Qaeda plots to attack the United States.
Graham ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination and then decided not to seek reelection to the Senate this year. He has said he hopes his book will illuminate FBI and CIA failures in the war on terrorism and he also offers recommendations on ways to reform the intelligence community.
On Iraq, Graham said the administration and CIA consistently overplayed its estimates of Saddam Hussein's threat in its public statements and declassified reports, while its secret reports contained warnings that the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was not conclusive.
In October 2002, Tenet told Graham that ''there were 550 sites where weapons of mass destruction were either produced or stored'' in Iraq.
''It was, in short, a vivid and terrifying case for war. The problem was it did not accurately represent the classified estimate we had received just days earlier,'' Graham wrote. ``It was two different messages, directed at two different audiences. I was outraged.''
In his book, Graham is especially critical of the FBI for its inability to track al Qaeda operatives in the United States and blasts the CIA for ``politicizing intelligence.''
He reserves his harshest criticism for Bush.
Graham found the president had ''an unforgivable level of intellectual -- and even common sense -- indifference'' toward analyzing the comparative threats posed by Iraq and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
When the weapons were not found, one year after the invasion of Iraq, Bush attended a black-tie dinner in Washington, Graham recalled. Bush gave a humorous speech with slides, showing him looking under White House furniture and joking, ``Nope, no WMDs there.''
Graham wrote: ``It was one of the most offensive things I have witnessed. Having recently attended the funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq, who left behind a young wife and two preschool-age children, I found nothing funny about a deceitful justification for war.''
By FRANK DAVIES
WASHINGTON - Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.
The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote.
And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.
Graham recalled this conversation at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa with Franks, then head of Central Command, who was ``looking troubled'':
``Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.''
''Excuse me?'' I asked.
''Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,'' he continued.
Graham concluded: 'Gen. Franks' mission -- which, as a good soldier, he was loyally carrying out -- was being downgraded from a war to a manhunt.''
Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October 2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would hinder the fight against al Qaeda terrorism.
He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with Rep. Porter Goss, nominated last month to be the next CIA director. According to Graham, the FBI and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers.
Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave significant financial support to two hijackers, were working for the Saudi government.
Al-Bayoumi received a monthly allowance from a contractor for Saudi Civil Aviation that jumped from $465 to $3,700 in March 2000, after he helped Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhdar -- two of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- find apartments and make contacts in San Diego, just before they began pilot training.
When the staff tried to conduct interviews in that investigation, and with an FBI informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who also helped the eventual hijackers, they were blocked by the FBI and the administration, Graham wrote.
The administration and CIA also insisted that the details about the Saudi support network that benefited two hijackers be left out of the final congressional report, Graham complained.
Bush had concluded that ''a nation-state that had aided the terrorists should not be held publicly to account,'' Graham wrote. ``It was as if the president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America's safety.''
Saudi officials have vociferously denied any ties to the hijackers or al Qaeda plots to attack the United States.
Graham ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination and then decided not to seek reelection to the Senate this year. He has said he hopes his book will illuminate FBI and CIA failures in the war on terrorism and he also offers recommendations on ways to reform the intelligence community.
On Iraq, Graham said the administration and CIA consistently overplayed its estimates of Saddam Hussein's threat in its public statements and declassified reports, while its secret reports contained warnings that the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was not conclusive.
In October 2002, Tenet told Graham that ''there were 550 sites where weapons of mass destruction were either produced or stored'' in Iraq.
''It was, in short, a vivid and terrifying case for war. The problem was it did not accurately represent the classified estimate we had received just days earlier,'' Graham wrote. ``It was two different messages, directed at two different audiences. I was outraged.''
In his book, Graham is especially critical of the FBI for its inability to track al Qaeda operatives in the United States and blasts the CIA for ``politicizing intelligence.''
He reserves his harshest criticism for Bush.
Graham found the president had ''an unforgivable level of intellectual -- and even common sense -- indifference'' toward analyzing the comparative threats posed by Iraq and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
When the weapons were not found, one year after the invasion of Iraq, Bush attended a black-tie dinner in Washington, Graham recalled. Bush gave a humorous speech with slides, showing him looking under White House furniture and joking, ``Nope, no WMDs there.''
Graham wrote: ``It was one of the most offensive things I have witnessed. Having recently attended the funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq, who left behind a young wife and two preschool-age children, I found nothing funny about a deceitful justification for war.''
Friday, September 03, 2004
When I watched the Republican National Convention I noticed one thing over and over and over again, they really seemed to hate Democrats. One thing that I think sums up the two conventions is the keynote address. The address at both conventions was given by a "Democrat" even though Zell Miller has been "divorced" by the State of Georgia's Democratic party. So if you didn't watch the conventions, here this will sum them for you, keep in mind they call us pessimistic.
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Barak Obama - Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dick Durbin. You make us all proud.
On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, Land of Lincoln, let me express my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention.
Tonight is a particular honor for me because — let’s face it — my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father — my grandfather — was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.
While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised their baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through F.H.A., and later moved west all the way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.
And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two continents.
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.
They are both passed away now. And yet, I know that, on this night, they look down on me with great pride.
I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation — not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’
That is the true genius of America — a faith in simple dreams,, an insistence on small miracles. That we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted at least, most of the time.
This year, in this election, we are called to reaffirm our values and our commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we are measuring up, to the legacy of our forbearers, and the promise of future generations.
And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents — I say to you tonight: we have more work to do. More work to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Ill., who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour. More to do for the father that I met who was losing his job and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay $4,500 a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on. More to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.
Now don’t get me wrong. The people I meet — in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks — they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead — and they want to.
Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon.
Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn — they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.
People don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
They know we can do better. And they want that choice.
In this election, we offer that choice. Our Party has chosen a man to lead us who embodies the best this country has to offer. And that man is John Kerry. John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they’ve defined his life. From his heroic service to Vietnam, to his years as a prosecutor and lieutenant governor, through two decades in the United States Senate, he has devoted himself to this country. Again and again, we’ve seen him make tough choices when easier ones were available.
His values — and his record — affirm what is best in us. John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded; so instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he offers them to companies creating jobs here at home.
John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves.
John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies, or the sabotage of foreign oil fields.
John Kerry believes in the Constitutional freedoms that have made our country the envy of the world, and he will never sacrifice our basic liberties, nor use faith as a wedge to divide us.
And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.
You know, a while back, I met a young man named Shamus [Seamus?] in a V.F.W. Hall in East Moline, Ill.. He was a good-looking kid, six two, six three, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines, and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he is serving us?
I thought of the 900 men and women — sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who won’t be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families I’ve met who were struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but who still lacked long-term health benefits because they were Reservists.
When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.
Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued — and they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this.
And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.
John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper. For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we’re all connected as one people.
If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
It is that fundamental belief, it is that fundamental belief, I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?
John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope.
I’m not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores. The hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.
Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.
I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity. I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair. I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.
America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do — if we do what we must do, then I have no doubts that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as president, and John Edwards will be sworn in as vice president, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.
Thank you very much everybody. God bless you. Thank you.
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Zell Miller - Since I last stood in this spot, a whole new generation of the Miller Family has been born: Four great grandchildren.
Along with all the other members of our close-knit family -- they are my and Shirley's most precious possessions.
And I know that's how you feel about your family also.
Like you, I think of their future, the promises and the perils they will face.
Like you, I believe that the next four years will determine what kind of world they will grow up in.
And like you, I ask which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?
The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party.
There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is
George Bush.
In the summer of 1940, I was an eight-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley.
Our country was not yet at war but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.
President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America "all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger."
In 1940 Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.
And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man.
He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.
And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.
Shortly before Wilkie died he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom", he would prefer the latter.
Where are such statesmen today?
Where is the bi-partisanship in this country when we need it most?
Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in-Chief.
What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in?
I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.
It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.
Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.
Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.
And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.
Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.
Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.
For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.
No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.
But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.
They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.
It is not their patriotism - it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter's pacifism would lead to peace.
They were wrong.
They claimed Reagan's defense buildup would lead to war.
They were wrong.
And, no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror.
Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.
The B-1 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, dropped 40% of the bombs in the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom.
The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein's command post in Iraq.
The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down Khadifi's Libyan MIGs over the Gulf of Sidra. The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora.
The Apache helicopter, that Senator Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War. The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nation's Capital and this very city after 9/11.
I could go on and on and on: Against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Hussein's scud missiles over Israel, Against the Aegis air-defense cruiser, Against the Strategic Defense Initiative, Against the Trident missile, against, against, against.
This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?
U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?
Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric.
Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.
Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.
Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.
John Kerry, who says he doesn't like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security.
That's the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician wants to be leader of the free world.
Free for how long?
For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.
As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away.
George Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.
John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday's war. George Bush believes we have to fight today's war and be ready for tomorrow's challenges. George Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists.
No matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl under.
George Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to get a better grip.
From John Kerry, they get a "yes-no-maybe" bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends.
I first got to know George Bush when we served as governors together. I admire this man.
I am moved by the respect he shows the First Lady, his unabashed love for his parents and his daughters, and the fact that he is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America.
I can identify with someone who has lived that line in "Amazing Grace," "Was blind, but now I see," and I like the fact that he's the same man on Saturday night that he is on Sunday morning.
He is not a slick talker but he is a straight shooter and, where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words.
I have knocked on the door of this man's soul and found someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel.
The man I trust to protect my most precious possession: my family.
This election will change forever the course of history, and that's not any history. It's our family's history.
The only question is how. The answer lies with each of us. And, like many generations before us, we've got some hard choosing to do.
Right now the world just cannot afford an indecisive America. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.
In this hour of danger our President has had the courage to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him.
Thank you.
God Bless this great country and God Bless George W. Bush.
-----------------
Barak Obama - Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dick Durbin. You make us all proud.
On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, Land of Lincoln, let me express my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention.
Tonight is a particular honor for me because — let’s face it — my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father — my grandfather — was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.
While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised their baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through F.H.A., and later moved west all the way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.
And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two continents.
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.
They are both passed away now. And yet, I know that, on this night, they look down on me with great pride.
I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation — not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’
That is the true genius of America — a faith in simple dreams,, an insistence on small miracles. That we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted at least, most of the time.
This year, in this election, we are called to reaffirm our values and our commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we are measuring up, to the legacy of our forbearers, and the promise of future generations.
And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents — I say to you tonight: we have more work to do. More work to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Ill., who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour. More to do for the father that I met who was losing his job and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay $4,500 a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on. More to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.
Now don’t get me wrong. The people I meet — in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks — they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead — and they want to.
Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon.
Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn — they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.
People don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
They know we can do better. And they want that choice.
In this election, we offer that choice. Our Party has chosen a man to lead us who embodies the best this country has to offer. And that man is John Kerry. John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they’ve defined his life. From his heroic service to Vietnam, to his years as a prosecutor and lieutenant governor, through two decades in the United States Senate, he has devoted himself to this country. Again and again, we’ve seen him make tough choices when easier ones were available.
His values — and his record — affirm what is best in us. John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded; so instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he offers them to companies creating jobs here at home.
John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves.
John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies, or the sabotage of foreign oil fields.
John Kerry believes in the Constitutional freedoms that have made our country the envy of the world, and he will never sacrifice our basic liberties, nor use faith as a wedge to divide us.
And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.
You know, a while back, I met a young man named Shamus [Seamus?] in a V.F.W. Hall in East Moline, Ill.. He was a good-looking kid, six two, six three, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines, and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he is serving us?
I thought of the 900 men and women — sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who won’t be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families I’ve met who were struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but who still lacked long-term health benefits because they were Reservists.
When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.
Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued — and they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this.
And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.
John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper. For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we’re all connected as one people.
If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
It is that fundamental belief, it is that fundamental belief, I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?
John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope.
I’m not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores. The hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.
Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.
I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity. I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair. I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.
America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do — if we do what we must do, then I have no doubts that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as president, and John Edwards will be sworn in as vice president, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.
Thank you very much everybody. God bless you. Thank you.
------
Zell Miller - Since I last stood in this spot, a whole new generation of the Miller Family has been born: Four great grandchildren.
Along with all the other members of our close-knit family -- they are my and Shirley's most precious possessions.
And I know that's how you feel about your family also.
Like you, I think of their future, the promises and the perils they will face.
Like you, I believe that the next four years will determine what kind of world they will grow up in.
And like you, I ask which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?
The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party.
There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is
George Bush.
In the summer of 1940, I was an eight-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley.
Our country was not yet at war but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.
President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America "all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger."
In 1940 Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.
And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man.
He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.
And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.
Shortly before Wilkie died he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom", he would prefer the latter.
Where are such statesmen today?
Where is the bi-partisanship in this country when we need it most?
Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in-Chief.
What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in?
I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.
It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.
Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.
Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.
And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.
Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.
Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.
For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.
No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.
But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.
They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.
It is not their patriotism - it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter's pacifism would lead to peace.
They were wrong.
They claimed Reagan's defense buildup would lead to war.
They were wrong.
And, no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror.
Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.
The B-1 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, dropped 40% of the bombs in the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom.
The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein's command post in Iraq.
The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down Khadifi's Libyan MIGs over the Gulf of Sidra. The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora.
The Apache helicopter, that Senator Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War. The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nation's Capital and this very city after 9/11.
I could go on and on and on: Against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Hussein's scud missiles over Israel, Against the Aegis air-defense cruiser, Against the Strategic Defense Initiative, Against the Trident missile, against, against, against.
This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?
U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?
Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric.
Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.
Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.
Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.
John Kerry, who says he doesn't like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security.
That's the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician wants to be leader of the free world.
Free for how long?
For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.
As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away.
George Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.
John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday's war. George Bush believes we have to fight today's war and be ready for tomorrow's challenges. George Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists.
No matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl under.
George Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to get a better grip.
From John Kerry, they get a "yes-no-maybe" bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends.
I first got to know George Bush when we served as governors together. I admire this man.
I am moved by the respect he shows the First Lady, his unabashed love for his parents and his daughters, and the fact that he is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America.
I can identify with someone who has lived that line in "Amazing Grace," "Was blind, but now I see," and I like the fact that he's the same man on Saturday night that he is on Sunday morning.
He is not a slick talker but he is a straight shooter and, where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words.
I have knocked on the door of this man's soul and found someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel.
The man I trust to protect my most precious possession: my family.
This election will change forever the course of history, and that's not any history. It's our family's history.
The only question is how. The answer lies with each of us. And, like many generations before us, we've got some hard choosing to do.
Right now the world just cannot afford an indecisive America. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.
In this hour of danger our President has had the courage to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him.
Thank you.
God Bless this great country and God Bless George W. Bush.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Smear Boat Veterans for Bush
The "swift boat" veterans attacking John Kerry's war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives using the same vicious techniques they used against John McCain four years ago.
Salon.com
By Joe Conason
May 4, 2004 | The latest conservative outfit to fire an angry broadside against John Kerry's heroic war record is Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which today launches a campaign to brand the Democrat "unfit to serve as commander in chief." Billing itself as representing the "other 97 percent of veterans" from Kerry's Navy unit who don't support his presidential candidacy, the group insists that all presidential candidates must be "totally honest and forthcoming" about their military service.
These "swift boat vets" claim still to be furious about Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony against the war in which he spoke about atrocities in Indochina's "free fire zones." More than three decades later, facing the complicated truth about Vietnam remains difficult. But this group's political connections make clear that its agenda is to target the election of 2004.
Behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are veteran corporate media consultant and Texas Republican activist Merrie Spaeth, who is listed as the group's media contact; eternal Kerry antagonist and Houston attorney John E. O'Neill, law partner of Spaeth's late husband, Tex Lezar; and retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, a cigar-chomping former Vietnam commander once described as "the classic body-count guy" who "wanted hooches destroyed and people killed."
Spaeth told Salon that O'Neill first approached her last winter to discuss his "concerns about Sen. Kerry." O'Neill has been assailing Kerry since 1971, when the former Navy officer was selected for the role by Charles Colson, Richard Nixon's dirty-tricks aide. Spaeth heard O'Neill out, but told him, she says, that he "sounded like a crazed extremist" and should "button his lip" and avoid speaking with the press. But since Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination, Spaeth has changed her mind and decided to donate her public relations services on a "pro bono" basis to O'Neill's latest anti-Kerry effort. "About three weeks ago, four weeks ago," she said, the group's leaders "met in my office for about 12 hours" to prepare for their Washington debut.
Although not as well known as Karen Hughes, Spaeth is among the most experienced and best connected Republican communications executives. During the Reagan administration she served as director of the White House Office of Media Liaison, where she specialized in promoting "news" items that boosted President Reagan to TV stations around the country. While living in Washington she met and married Lezar, a Reagan Justice Department lawyer who ran for lieutenant governor of Texas in 1994 with George W. Bush, then the party's candidate for governor. (Lezar lost; Bush won.)
Through Lezar, who died of a heart attack last January, she met O'Neill, his law partner in Clements, O'Neill, Pierce, Wilson & Fulkerson, a Dallas firm. (It also includes Margaret Wilson, the former counsel to Gov. Bush who followed him to Washington, where she served for a time as a deputy counsel in the Department of Commerce.)
Spaeth's partisanship runs still deeper, as does her history of handling difficult P.R. cases for Republicans. In 1998, for example, she coached Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, to prepare him for his testimony urging the impeachment of President Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee. She even reviewed videotapes of his previous television appearances to give him pointers about his delivery and demeanor. The man responsible for arranging her advice to Starr was another old friend of her late husband's, Theodore Olson, who was counsel to the right-wing American Spectator when it acted as a front for the dirty-tricks campaign against Clinton known as the Arkansas Project; he is now the solicitor general in the Bush Justice Department. (Olson also happens to be the godfather of Spaeth's daughter.)
In 2000, Spaeth participated in the most subterranean episode of the Republican primary contest when a shadowy group billed as "Republicans for Clean Air" produced television ads falsely attacking the environmental record of Sen. John McCain in California, New York and Ohio. While the identity of those funding the supposedly "independent" ads was carefully hidden, reporters soon learned that Republicans for Clean Air was simply Sam Wyly -- a big Bush contributor and beneficiary of Bush administration decisions in Texas -- and his brother, Charles, another Bush "Pioneer" contributor. (One of the Wyly family's private capital funds, Maverick Capital of Dallas, had been awarded a state contract to invest $90 million for the University of Texas endowment.)
When the secret emerged, spokeswoman Spaeth caught the flak for the Wylys, an experience she recalled to me as "horrible" and "awful." Her job was to assure reporters that there had been no illegal coordination between the Bush campaign and the Wyly brothers in arranging the McCain-trashing message. Not everyone believed her explanation, including the Arizona senator.
The veteran group's founder, Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, first gained notoriety in Vietnam as a strutting, cigar-chewing Navy captain. But it was O'Neill, by now a familiar figure on the Kerry-bashing circuit, who came to Spaeth for assistance.
Until now, Hoffmann has been best known as the commanding officer whose obsession with body counts and "scorekeeping" may have provoked the February 1969 massacre of Vietnamese civilians at Thanh Phong by a unit led by Bob Kerrey -- the Medal of Honor winner who lost a leg in Nam, became a U.S. senator from Nebraska and now sits on the 9/11 commission.
After journalist Gregory Vistica exposed the Thanh Phong massacre and the surrounding circumstances in the New York Times magazine three years ago, conservative columnist Christopher Caldwell took particular note of the cameo role played by Kerrey's C.O., who had warned his men not to return from missions without enough kills. "One of the myths due to die as a result of Vistica's article is that which holds the war could have been won sensibly and cleanly if the 'suits' back in Washington had merely left the military men to their own devices," Caldwell wrote. "In this light, one of the great merits of Vistica's article is its portrait of the Kurtz-like psychopath who commanded Kerrey's Navy task force, Capt. Roy Hoffmann."
Arguments about the war in Vietnam seem destined to continue forever. For now, however, the lingering bitterness and ambiguity of those days provide smear material against an antiwar war hero with five medals on behalf of a privileged Guardsman with a dubious duty record. The president's Texas allies -- whose animus against his Democratic challenger dates back to the Nixon era -- are now deploying the same techniques and personnel they used to attack McCain's integrity four years ago. Bush's "independent" supporters would apparently rather talk about the Vietnam quagmire than about his deadly incompetence in Iraq.
The "swift boat" veterans attacking John Kerry's war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives using the same vicious techniques they used against John McCain four years ago.
Salon.com
By Joe Conason
May 4, 2004 | The latest conservative outfit to fire an angry broadside against John Kerry's heroic war record is Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which today launches a campaign to brand the Democrat "unfit to serve as commander in chief." Billing itself as representing the "other 97 percent of veterans" from Kerry's Navy unit who don't support his presidential candidacy, the group insists that all presidential candidates must be "totally honest and forthcoming" about their military service.
These "swift boat vets" claim still to be furious about Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony against the war in which he spoke about atrocities in Indochina's "free fire zones." More than three decades later, facing the complicated truth about Vietnam remains difficult. But this group's political connections make clear that its agenda is to target the election of 2004.
Behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are veteran corporate media consultant and Texas Republican activist Merrie Spaeth, who is listed as the group's media contact; eternal Kerry antagonist and Houston attorney John E. O'Neill, law partner of Spaeth's late husband, Tex Lezar; and retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, a cigar-chomping former Vietnam commander once described as "the classic body-count guy" who "wanted hooches destroyed and people killed."
Spaeth told Salon that O'Neill first approached her last winter to discuss his "concerns about Sen. Kerry." O'Neill has been assailing Kerry since 1971, when the former Navy officer was selected for the role by Charles Colson, Richard Nixon's dirty-tricks aide. Spaeth heard O'Neill out, but told him, she says, that he "sounded like a crazed extremist" and should "button his lip" and avoid speaking with the press. But since Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination, Spaeth has changed her mind and decided to donate her public relations services on a "pro bono" basis to O'Neill's latest anti-Kerry effort. "About three weeks ago, four weeks ago," she said, the group's leaders "met in my office for about 12 hours" to prepare for their Washington debut.
Although not as well known as Karen Hughes, Spaeth is among the most experienced and best connected Republican communications executives. During the Reagan administration she served as director of the White House Office of Media Liaison, where she specialized in promoting "news" items that boosted President Reagan to TV stations around the country. While living in Washington she met and married Lezar, a Reagan Justice Department lawyer who ran for lieutenant governor of Texas in 1994 with George W. Bush, then the party's candidate for governor. (Lezar lost; Bush won.)
Through Lezar, who died of a heart attack last January, she met O'Neill, his law partner in Clements, O'Neill, Pierce, Wilson & Fulkerson, a Dallas firm. (It also includes Margaret Wilson, the former counsel to Gov. Bush who followed him to Washington, where she served for a time as a deputy counsel in the Department of Commerce.)
Spaeth's partisanship runs still deeper, as does her history of handling difficult P.R. cases for Republicans. In 1998, for example, she coached Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, to prepare him for his testimony urging the impeachment of President Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee. She even reviewed videotapes of his previous television appearances to give him pointers about his delivery and demeanor. The man responsible for arranging her advice to Starr was another old friend of her late husband's, Theodore Olson, who was counsel to the right-wing American Spectator when it acted as a front for the dirty-tricks campaign against Clinton known as the Arkansas Project; he is now the solicitor general in the Bush Justice Department. (Olson also happens to be the godfather of Spaeth's daughter.)
In 2000, Spaeth participated in the most subterranean episode of the Republican primary contest when a shadowy group billed as "Republicans for Clean Air" produced television ads falsely attacking the environmental record of Sen. John McCain in California, New York and Ohio. While the identity of those funding the supposedly "independent" ads was carefully hidden, reporters soon learned that Republicans for Clean Air was simply Sam Wyly -- a big Bush contributor and beneficiary of Bush administration decisions in Texas -- and his brother, Charles, another Bush "Pioneer" contributor. (One of the Wyly family's private capital funds, Maverick Capital of Dallas, had been awarded a state contract to invest $90 million for the University of Texas endowment.)
When the secret emerged, spokeswoman Spaeth caught the flak for the Wylys, an experience she recalled to me as "horrible" and "awful." Her job was to assure reporters that there had been no illegal coordination between the Bush campaign and the Wyly brothers in arranging the McCain-trashing message. Not everyone believed her explanation, including the Arizona senator.
The veteran group's founder, Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, first gained notoriety in Vietnam as a strutting, cigar-chewing Navy captain. But it was O'Neill, by now a familiar figure on the Kerry-bashing circuit, who came to Spaeth for assistance.
Until now, Hoffmann has been best known as the commanding officer whose obsession with body counts and "scorekeeping" may have provoked the February 1969 massacre of Vietnamese civilians at Thanh Phong by a unit led by Bob Kerrey -- the Medal of Honor winner who lost a leg in Nam, became a U.S. senator from Nebraska and now sits on the 9/11 commission.
After journalist Gregory Vistica exposed the Thanh Phong massacre and the surrounding circumstances in the New York Times magazine three years ago, conservative columnist Christopher Caldwell took particular note of the cameo role played by Kerrey's C.O., who had warned his men not to return from missions without enough kills. "One of the myths due to die as a result of Vistica's article is that which holds the war could have been won sensibly and cleanly if the 'suits' back in Washington had merely left the military men to their own devices," Caldwell wrote. "In this light, one of the great merits of Vistica's article is its portrait of the Kurtz-like psychopath who commanded Kerrey's Navy task force, Capt. Roy Hoffmann."
Arguments about the war in Vietnam seem destined to continue forever. For now, however, the lingering bitterness and ambiguity of those days provide smear material against an antiwar war hero with five medals on behalf of a privileged Guardsman with a dubious duty record. The president's Texas allies -- whose animus against his Democratic challenger dates back to the Nixon era -- are now deploying the same techniques and personnel they used to attack McCain's integrity four years ago. Bush's "independent" supporters would apparently rather talk about the Vietnam quagmire than about his deadly incompetence in Iraq.
Look people, I saw this and and I couldn't help but put it on the site. I'm not really suggesting anything here but it is so thought provoking I can't help but do this. So, Click Here and just watch for a while. I don't know what to say about it really. I guess I'm speechless.
Caleb
Caleb
