Satire: Memo for Election 2004: What Is "Compassionate Conservatism"

What is George Bush's "compassionate conservatism," some may ask? Well, America, now that we have kicked butt in Iraq and put the rest of the world on notice that we don't need to listen to anybody, we don't care if you call it what it is: "compassionate fascism."
So, we didn't really win the election in 2000...so what? Hitler didn't win in 1933, either. But, Hitler was a bad, bad, bad guy. He's no hero for us compassionate conservatives/fascists! We won't use his name again, we promise. READ

Humor: THE BUSH LEAGUE: The Superpower Action Team of the 21st Century

Starring: George W. Bush as Lonestar, Dick Cheney as Captain Industry, Don Rumsfeld as Iron Hawk, and John Ashcroft as The Spook. VIEW SITE

Europeans Are Baffled by Bush's America

The flags are everywhere, draped most often over the railings of sun-splashed balconies and planted, sometimes, right in a geranium pot.
They can be found in the most unexpected places, propped up alongside the alabaster statue of this or that patron saint, accustomed though these gentlemen are to sharing their niches with offerings of flowers and votive candles.
The Italians have not festooned their terraces nor their SUVs with decals of their national tricolore, not least because they prefer the motor scooter for coping with high fuel costs and choking traffic. The government of Silvio Berlusconi is a member of President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" in Iraq. But the people's flag of preference is a pastel rainbow, the word Pace - Peace - drawn across its center in white letters. READ

American jobless rate rises as economy loses more workers

The bleak economic news from the United States continues to pour in as employers shed 48,000 jobs in April, pushing up the unemployment rate to an eight-year high of 6 per cent.
Paced by heavy losses among manufacturers, airlines and retailers, the economy lost jobs for the third consecutive month in April, according to a U.S. Labour Department report that was released yesterday.
... Since the start of 2001, when the economy slipped into recession, U.S. employers have cut more than two million jobs. There are now 8.8 million out of work, up from 8.4 million in March. READ

The Baghdad deal

Much of the world was surprised. After the spirited resistance in the south of Iraq, how could Baghdad possibly have fallen in only two days?
An Asia Times Online investigation in Baghdad, Tikrit and Najaf has yielded a clear certainty among Iraqis, both Sunni and Shi'ite, as to the answer: The Pentagon and the Ba'ath Party leadership made a safqua ("secret deal" in Arabic) for the (almost) bloodless fall of Baghdad. Crucially, this safqua may have included a package of American green cards for top Republican and Special Republican Guard commanders and their families. READ

Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd About Bush's Use of Military Props for Political Messages

...President Bush's address to the American people announcing combat victory in Iraq deserved to be marked with solemnity, not extravagance; with gratitude to God, not self-congratulatory gestures. American blood has been shed on foreign soil in defense of the President's policies. This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial. This is real life, and real lives have been lost. To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the President to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech. ...
As I watched the President's speech, before the great banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," I could not help but be reminded of the tobacco barns of my youth, which served as country road advertising backdrops for the slogans of chewing tobacco purveyors. I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw. READ

Ship Carrying Bush Delayed Return: Carrier That Spent Night off San Diego Could Have Gone Straight to Home Port

Pentagon officials said yesterday that an aircraft carrier waited within sight of San Diego last week while President Bush slept aboard, instead of heading straight to port after 10 months at sea....
Democrats alleged that the 1,092-foot carrier was delayed to enhance Bush's trip, and called it a sign that he was using the military as a prop for political advantage. The Lincoln provided a spectacular platform for his May Day address declaring victory in Iraq, and the commander in chief's landing aboard in an S-3B Viking jet produced huge headlines labeling him "Top Gun."
... Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee charged that the cost of remaining at sea for an extra day would be approximately $800,000 to $1 million. A committee report labeled the visit a "shameless stunt." READ

Bush Photo Oops

President Bush recoils after hitting his head,Thursday, May 1, 2003, as he boarded Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House. Bush is headed for California where he will fly and land on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as it steams toward San Diego. Bush will spend the night aboard the carrier. VIEW

iraqometer

Running total of Bombs dropped, Civilian Casualties, Cost per taxpayer, Etc. VIEW SITE

Bush stays on war footing for his re-election drive

PRESIDENT BUSH unveiled the central points of his re-election campaign yesterday, mixing muscular rhetoric on the war against terror with economic optimism.
Mr Bush made his biggest foray into domestic politics since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, travelling to Ohio to push his endangered package of tax cuts, which he insists are a vital spur to the United States’s faltering economy.
But the President’s message, and the choreography of his White House officials, ensured that he never strayed far from the theme of national security that will dominate his drive for a second term.
... Mr Bush will present Iraq as part of a process rather than a fixed event. Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s hugely influential strategist, sketched out the approach this week, saying: “It’s not like it’s going to be, ‘Iraq is over, America can withdraw into itself again’.” READ

In New Hampshire, the Spotlight Is on Rove
White House Adviser Draws Crowd as He Lays Foundation for Bush Campaign

... His schedule had all the trappings of a candidate rather than a mere political strategist -- two public speeches, several media interviews, a private meeting with Republican contributors, a pep rally with party activists and a quiet session with the publisher of the conservative Manchester Union Leader.
His mission today was to try to assure people that President Bush is worried about the economy and has a "robust agenda" of tax cuts to improve it as well as to remind them of the role Bush has played -- and will continue to play -- in waging war against terrorism. Rove also was here to lay the foundation for the president's reelection campaign. READ

Karl Rove: Counting Votes While the Bombs Drop

Karl Rove led the nation to war to improve the political prospects of George W. Bush. I know how surreal that sounds. But I also know it is true.
As the president's chief political advisor, Rove is involved in every decision coming out of the Oval Office. In fact, he flat out makes some of them. He is co-president of the United States, just as he was co-candidate for that office and co-governor of Texas. His relationship with the president is the most profound and complex of all of the White House advisors. And his role creates questions not addressed by our Constitution. READ

George W. Bush Resume

Past work experience: • Ran for congress and lost. • Produced a Hollywood slasher B movie. • Bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas, company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock. • Bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using tax-payer money. • Biggest move: Traded Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox • With fathers help (and his name) was elected Governor of Texas.
Accomplishments: Changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the Union. Replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog ridden city in America. • Cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government to the tune of billions in borrowed money. • Set record for most executions by any Governor in American history. • Became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, with the help of my fathers appointments to the Supreme Court. READ

AWOL Bush

This is not the story of a search for missing records. We have the pertinent records.
This is not a hunt for credible eyewitnesses and first hand statements. The officers involved have stepped forward. We have their testimony and we have the signed statements of those no longer living.
This is the story of how George Walker Bush walked away from a years duty while in the National Guard.
And, this is the story of how he has thus far gotten away with it. READ

We went to war just to boost the white male ego by Norman Mailer

With their dominance in sport, at work and at home eroded, Bush thought white American men needed to know they were still good at something. That's where Iraq came in...
So Iraq was chosen. Our good people on high would rush to claim that our putative foe possessed a nuclear threat. Along the way, they presented President Saddam Hussein as the closet architect of 9/11. Then they declared that he ran a nest of terrorists. None of that held up on close examination but it did not have to. We were ready to go to war anyway. After 9/11, and the absence of Osama bin Laden’s body in Afghanistan or anywhere else, why not choose Saddam as the evil force behind the fall of the twin towers? We would liberate the Iraqis. Wantonly, shamelessly, proudly, exuberantly, one half of our prodigiously divided America could hardly wait for the new war. We understood that our television was going to be terrific. And it was. Sanitised but terrific — which is, after all, exactly what network and good cable television are supposed to be. READ

Archive Humor: George W. Bush: 'No Decision Has Been Made About Iraq'

President George Bush again confirmed today from his home in Crawford Texas that 'no decision has been made about Iraq.' Here's part of the transcript of his latest press conference…
Q: Mr. President, you've repeatedly said that you have no 'plan on your desk' for an Iraqi invasion yet numerous plans for an invasion have been leaked to the press. How do you explain that inconsistency?"
The President: Well, I don't have any plans on my desk. I may have seen some of them, discussed them with my staff, held them in my hand, and even rolled up one of them and swatted Jenna on the head for asking if she could have a beer, but none of those plans have ever been on my desk. READ

Did Bush Deceive Us in His Rush to War?

Now that the war has been won, is it permissible to suggest that our emperor has no clothes? I'm not referring to his abysmal stewardship of the economy but rather the fig-leaf war he donned to cover up his glaring domestic failures.
President Bush went to war with Hitler's Germany and found another Afghanistan instead. After comparing the threat of Hussein to that of the Führer, it was odd to find upon our arrival a tottering regime squatting on a demoralized Third World populace.
Now the pressure is on for Bush to find or plant those alleged weapons of mass destruction fast or stand exposed as a bullying fraud.
...And, in a more sober mood, one must still ask the embarrassing yet essential question: Did our President knowingly deceive us in his rush to war?
If he did, and we are truly concerned about our own democracy, we would have to acknowledge that such an egregious abuse of power rises to the status of an impeachable offense. READ

Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies
Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war

The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. "They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat," the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East newspaper which said, "Washington has to prove its case. If it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved the road to war with lies", he added: "You can draw your own conclusions." READ

Did our leaders lie to us? Do we even care?`Now that wasn't so bad, was it?''

One of my pro-war acquaintances said this in a reassuring, not gloating, manner. His tone was a congenial gesture in the wake of our heated arguments over the Iraq War in recent weeks; we had remained tensely civil....''Would it bother you if we were to discover that George Bush lied about the case for going to war?'' I asked.
He knew what I was referring to. His blunt answer left my jaw hanging. ``Everyone knows he lied about weapons of mass destruction being the point of the war.''
Just a few weeks ago, any statement from me that Bush's case for war was riddled with inconsistencies and illogic would have brought swift and fierce condemnation from this fellow. Now, basking in the glow of military conquest -- and confronted by a thus-far futile search for chemical and biological weapons -- this hawk breezily conceded the point while also waving it away as inconsequential.
Have we become a country that wears its hypocrisy openly and proudly? READ

Reports of weapons 'greatly exaggerated

WHY have American and British Forces not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? The most plausible answer is that there are none, in the true sense of the word, even though forces are likely eventually to come across some very unpleasant weapons created by Saddam Hussein.
But Tony Blair and President Bush cannot give this answer, as they asserted unambiguously that these weapons existed in justifying the war. So members of Blair’s Cabinet and Bush’s Administration have felt obliged to offer less plausible accounts of where the elusive weapons might be.
The most ambitious so far were put forward yesterday by Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, in a fabulously implausible narrative which contradicated earlier statements by his Prime Minister, his colleagues and himself.
It is an understatement to say that the failure to find such weapons is an embarrassment for the British and American governments. Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, was always very careful to say that he was looking for weapons which were “unaccounted for”, discrepancies between what Iraq could have produced and what it had declared. READ

US: 'Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction'

The Bush administration has admitted that Saddam Hussein probably had no weapons of mass destruction.
Senior officials in the Bush administration have admitted that they would be 'amazed' if weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found in Iraq. READ

Blix attacks 'shaky' intelligence on weapons

The UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, yesterday condemned the prewar efforts of British and American intelligence to show that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and insisted that, without UN verification, their postwar inspections lacked credibility.
...he said the coalition had appeared to use "shaky" evidence, including forged documents, as a pretext for making war on Iraq.
Afterwards he said it was "conspicuous" that coalition forces had so far failed to find "anything relevant" in their search for proscribed weapons. READ

Vilified weapons inspectors may have got it right

President George Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is now acknowledging that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program is less clear-cut, and probably more difficult to establish, than the White House portrayed before the war.
... Almost three weeks since the fall of Baghdad, with senior Iraqi scientists and officials in US custody, no chemical or biological weapons stockpiles have been found. Neither has any evidence been uncovered that Iraq had restarted a nuclear program.
... Addressing the UN Security Council on February 5, Mr Powell said recent intelligence showed a missile brigade outside Baghdad was "dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agent to various locations". Mr Bush was equally alarmist, describing satellite evidence showing that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting Iraq's nuclear weapons programs with his top nuclear scientists, his "nuclear mujahideen". Iraq's deadliest weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists.
"We cannot wait for final proof," Mr Bush said. "The smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." READ

Were They Planted?

After the United States and Britain were shown to be providing bogus and plagiarized "intelligence" documents to the UN Security Council that supposedly "proved" Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program, the world's media is now being fed a steady stream of captured Iraqi "intelligence" documents from the rubble of Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence headquarters.
The problem with these documents is that they are being provided by the U.S. military to a few reporters working for a very suspect newspaper, London's Daily Telegraph (affectionately known as the Daily Torygraph" by those who understand the paper's right-wing slant). The Telegraph's April 27 Sunday edition reported that its correspondent in Baghdad, Inigo Gilmore, had been invited into the intelligence headquarters by U.S. troops and miraculously "found" amid the rubble a document indicating that Iraq invited Osama bin Laden to visit Iraq in March 1998. Gilmore also reported that the CIA been through the building several times before he found the document. Gilmore added that the CIA must have "missed" the document in their prior searches, an astounding claim since the CIA must have been intimately familiar with the building from their previous intelligence links with the Mukhabarat dating from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
It is amazing that the U.S. military would be so open about letting favored journalists walk freely about the Mukhabarat building when the Pentagon has clamped tight security on the Iraqi Oil Ministry. The reason for this is obvious. While the Mukhabarat building can be salted with phony intelligence documents, the Oil Ministry is likely rife with documents showing the links between Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney's old firm, Halliburton. The company signed more than $73 million in contracts with Saddam's government when Cheney was its Chief Executive Officer. ... READ

U.S. Restarts Its Nuclear Machine

The United States has restarted production of plutonium parts for nuclear bombs at its Los Alamos National Laboratory for the first time in 14 years.
The move may also violate the Nonproliferation Treaty that the United States, Russia and other nuclear nations signed in 2000, in which they pledged to undertake an "irreversible reduction" of their nuclear arsenals.
..."It is a sign that after a long period of decline, the weapons complex is back and growing," Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Energy Department weapons expert, told the Times.
"To the average U.S. citizen, it would be accurate to say we have restarted the production of nuclear weapons." READ

Weapons of Mass Destruction found!
Zoom on Doom: Easy-to-find nuclear weapons map

Since the US and the UK are having such a hard time finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we thought we'd lend a hand by providing this easy guide to the nukes we know about.
UN Weapons Inspectors and citizen weapons inspectors are welcome to use our map to check up on just where those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction have been hiding.
All information about these locations has been drawn from public sources, so we didn't have to worry about invading any countries, incurring civilian casualties, paying costly bounties for inside information or mess around with torture or illegal detention. VIEW SITE

Rep. Waxman Questions Halliburton Ties to Terrorism (PDF)

Truthout Editor's Note | This letter from Representative Henry Waxman should be read with care, for it asks virtually all of the important questions that have been surrounding this war and the corporate sponsors who pushed for it. READ

Bechtel's roots in Mideast: Lucrative projects date back to WWII

Almost 60 years ago, Stephen Bechtel Sr. walked the docks of his Sausalito shipyard with a young Saudi prince.
Faisal bin Abdul Aziz wanted a look at Bechtel's Marinship, where workers cranked out Liberty Ships and tankers for the war. His family, just starting to tap the oil beneath Saudi Arabia, was determined to modernize its desert kingdom. There would be much to build.
... Bechtel Corp. has amassed a history of lucrative work in the Arab world that other American companies can only envy. Now the privately held San Francisco company has landed its latest Middle Eastern contract - a $680 million effort to rebuild Iraq. READ

Halliburton cash registers ring in Iraq: Subsidiary’s contracts reach all aspects of reconstruction

Halliburton Energy Services, the giant government contractor formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, is overseeing no-bid Army projects worth nearly a half-billion dollars that involve almost every aspect of U.S. operations in Iraq, NBC News has learned. The projects extend well beyond a previously reported Pentagon contract the company won to put out oil-well fires in Iraq two months ago. READ

America Inc. Carves Up Spoils of War

4/14/02 IRAQ lies in ruins this morning. Its cities are bombed; its buildings have been torched by teenage arsonists; its shops, hospitals, factories and homes have been looted. This is Year Zero for Iraq. The old regime is gone and the United States is to rebuild this country literally from the ground up.
Since the beginning of the year, America has had its reconstruction plan in place. Answering directly to Centcom commander General Tommy Franks, retired Lt Gen Jay Garner will be in command of the reconstruction effort. He will be aided by a series of military hardmen, diplomats and Republican party place-men who will help the United States create “Free Iraq” – aided by exiles who are returning to get their share of the spoils.
This isn’t a selfless exercise. In a special Sunday Herald investigation, we have charted the network of financial kickbacks, political pay-backs, cronyism, self-interest and ferocious ideology that underpins the entire reconstruction scheme. READ

Rebuilding in Iraq calls for Republican bedfellows Commentary by Arianna Huffington

...If one were to plot a flowchart, this one would lay out the connections that guaranteed that the big winners in the post-Saddam Hussein sweepstakes would be those two ultimate Washington insiders, Halliburton and Bechtel Group.
We all know about Halliburton and its former CEO Dick Cheney. But the Bechtel chart is really Byzantine — starting with George Shultz, former Bechtel president, former Reagan secretary of state, and currently both a Bechtel board member and chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
Then there is Jack Sheehan, a senior VP at Bechtel and a member of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board. And then we have Chairman and CEO Riley Bechtel, who in February was appointed by Bush to the hoity-toity President's Export Council.
Of course, using influence to make a buck or two — or, say, 680 million — off Iraq is nothing new to Bechtel. Back in the 1980s, the company wanted to build a pipeline to carry oil from Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba — a project ardently supported by the Reagan administration, which included Shultz and a fellow Bechtel alumnus, Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger. I guess the thought was that all that political support might help people forget Saddam's annoying little habit of gassing people. READ

Reconstructing Iraq: Crony capitalism at its worst

An investigation by Neil Mackay of Scotland's Sunday Herald has disclosed the list of companies that are direct beneficiaries of the $80 billion package to finance the war in Iraq and its reconstruction approved recently by the US Senate.
The International Resources Group ("which made significant donations to the Republican Party") has won a $70 million contract for the humanitarian aid programme.
Four vice presidents of IRG have held senior positions with USAID and 48 technical staffers employed by the group have worked with USAID.
One of the first firms to receive a contract worth $4.8 million to manage the port of Umm Qasr was Stevedoring Services of America headed by John Hemingway who has made personal donations to the Republican Party.
Another company that has received a contract worth $600 million is Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton -- the world's largest provider of equipment and services to oil extracting companies -- that used to be run by Dick Cheney before he became Vice President of the US.
Incidentally, Halliburton under Cheney had conducted sales worth over $23 million with Iraq in 1998 and 1999 through the company's European subsidiaries ostensibly "to avoid straining relations with Washington", according to report published by the Financial Times in November 2000.
Since 1999, Halliburton has donated $700,000 -- or 95 per cent of all political donations made by the company -- to the Republican Party. READ

Real American agenda now becoming clear

The pullout of 10,000 U.S. troops from a Saudi air base was long overdue, not just because it was a favourite target of Osama bin Laden. It so embarrassed the ruling House of Saud that the Americans had to be kept in purdah, away from the public at a remote base in the desert.
...America now has a vise grip on the region, with 14 new post-9/11 bases, from eastern Europe through Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Pakistan and Afghanistan to the two Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The singular feature of all those new allies is that they are weak states. Most are undemocratic, if not repressive.
...The distance between American words and deeds is nowhere more evident than in George W. Bush's triumphalist declaration that he has licked terrorism in Iraq.
It turns out that he has a very selective dislike for terrorism.
Appallingly, he has quietly cozied up to a most notorious terrorist group, the leftist Mujahideen-e-Khalq in Iraq. READ

Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access to Four Key Bases in Iraq

The United States is planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the unsettled region, senior Bush administration officials say.
American military officials, in interviews this week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future: one at the international airport just outside Baghdad; another at Tallil, near Nasiriya in the south; the third at an isolated airstrip called H-1 in the western desert, along the old oil pipeline that runs to Jordan; and the last at the Bashur air field in the Kurdish north.
The military is already using these bases to support operations against the remnants of the old government, to deliver supplies and relief aid and for reconnaissance patrols. But as the invasion force withdraws in the months ahead and turns over control to a new Iraqi government, Pentagon officials expect to gain access to the bases in the event of some future crisis.
Whether that can be arranged depends on relations between Washington and whoever takes control in Baghdad. If the ties are close enough, the military relationship could become one of the most striking developments in a strategic revolution now playing out across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. READ

AMERICA'S NEXT TARGETS: Will the US turn to India after emptying the arsenals of 'rogue states'?

Saddam Hussein is gone, leaving no trace of his weapons of mass destruction, if he had any. The spotlight from Washington's laser designators is slowly turning towards neighbouring Syria, which is accused of having carted away Saddam's poison gases, his 'evil scientists' and his palace cronies.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has ruled out a military strike on Syria, but Washington and Tel Aviv are building a case against Damascus which, like Baghdad, was another seat of the caliphs. While the US has asked Damascus to come out on its hidden evil assets, Israel has asked it to stop harbouring Palestinian terrorists. US Secretary of State Colin Powell has already warned that "we will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward...we'll see how things unfold." Like Saddam's Iraq, Syria is now threatened with economic sanctions.
After Syria, the laser beam may shift to other poles on the 'axis of evil'. A case against Iran seems to be under preparation, with Teheran being accused of encouraging Hizbollah terrorists, and of building atom bombs. READ

Sharon recruits US mercenaries against Syria

Even before the “victory” in Iraq had been declared, Administration officials began leveling accusations at Syria that sounded strangely familiar, something like a regurgitation of the lies that had propelled our forces into the “war that wasn’t.” Predictably, that series of accusations was followed by Sharon’s demands of its mercenary forces, the US military, that they undertake five goals desired by Israel. These demands represent the next step in Israel’s fulfillment of the Wolfowitz/ Perle design to achieve “The New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” the report they prepared for the Israeli right wing Likud party in 1996. READ

The Other Roadmap

The White House is preparing to make yet another effort to present Israel with yet another peace plan -- the famous Quartet "roadmap" kept so far in an undisclosed location perhaps so that Rumsfeld cannot nuke it. Let us assume that the effort is genuine. On the face of it, there is much the U.S. can gain today from some advancement of Palestinian interests. Quite a few professional diplomats in the State Department must understand that forcing Israel to end its direct rule over Palestinians is a test and an opportunity for the U.S. to prove that it really wants popular cooperation in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. But can it be done?
The trouble for the Quartet's roadmap for Israel is that Israel has its own roadmap for the future of the United States....
...Consider the recent announcement of the Israeli Infrastructure Minister, Joseph Paritzky, that Israel and Jordan are planning talks over reopening the defunct Kirkuk-Haifa oil pipeline. Already, Arab resentment toward the U.S. is fueled by the widespread perception that U.S. Middle East policy is written in Tel Aviv. This is an over-simplification, but one that is closer to the truth than the explanations of U.S. policy found in major U.S. media. When Shiite protesters chant in Karbala, "America helps Israel kill Palestinians!" they are stating a simple, undeniable fact. It doesn't help that the signature of the new American proconsul of Iraq, Jay Garner, turned out on a letter praising IDF "restraint." The sight of "liberated" Iraqi oil now beginning to flow to Israel, to be refined in Haifa and later to be burnt in the engines of IDF tanks shooting at children in Rafeh, is all the U.S. needs in order to wipe out the last vestiges of credibility it may still enjoy in the region. READ

Iraq 'may have to quit Opec'

Iraq may have to leave the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries so it can pump out extra oil to pay for the country's reconstruction, says a former Iraqi oil minister who is now a key adviser to the American government.
The extra oil needed would be more than twice Iraq's pre-sanctions Opec quota and almost triple the present output of about 7 million barrels a day, said Fadhil Chalabi, who rejected a US invitation to become interim head of his country's oil sector.
Chalabi, who served on the US State Department's Future of Iraq Oil and Energy Working Group, says the Iraqi industry must be privatised to attract foreign investment following the war.
...Chalabi, cousin of Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon's choice to head the country, said he would be prepared to serve the Iraqi oil industry if a democratically elected government was in place.READ http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=6952&TagID=2About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents

BUSH COMES CLEAN: IT WAS ABOUT OIL

Bush's brazen Genghis Khan act seems carefully calculated to confirm our worst suspicions. First he appoints retired general Jay Garner, president of a GOP-connected defense contractor, SYColeman Corp., as viceroy of occupied Iraq. "The idea is we are in Iraq not as occupiers but as liberators, and here comes a guy who has attachments to companies that provided the wherewithal for the military assault on that country," marvels David Armstrong, a defense analyst at the National Security News Service. A smart and/or decent president would have picked a civilian for a civil administration post.
Then Bush slips a $680 million contract to the Bechtel Group, whose Republican-oriented board includes such Reagan-era GOP luminaries as CIA director William Casey, secretary of state George Schulz and defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. The deal puts the company in position to receive a big part of the $100 billion estimated total cost of Iraqi reconstruction. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel gave Republican candidates, including Bush, about $765,000 in PAC, soft money and individual campaign contributions between 1999 and 2002.
Finally, refusing to accept bids from potential competitors, Bush grants a two-year, $490 million contract for Iraqi oil field repairs to Halliburton Co., the Houston-based company where Dick Cheney worked as CEO from 1995 to 2000. "It will look a lot worse if Halliburton gets the USAID [Agency for International Development] contract, too," Bathsheba Crocker, an Iraq specialist for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned in March. "Then it really starts looking bad." Guess what! Halliburton has since scored a piece of that $600 million USAID contract. READ

A new, angry, Pentagon colony

...Chalabi has been sentenced to 22 years’ imprisonment for a bank fraud by a Jordanian court. An Arthur Andersen executive confirms the substance of the financial charges against Chalabi. Chalabi is considered an unsavoury element, much more compromised and untrustworthy than, say Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan - with his links to the oil company, Unocal - not just by SCIRI, but by the bulk of the Iraqi Opposition, including the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Coalition, the Iraqi National Front, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
The US is not only keen on promoting Chalabi; it is equally anxious to recruit into the “new” administration old, established officials of the Saddam government. Thus, Robert Fisk, undoubtedly the best-informed Western journalist reporting from West Asia, says in The Independent (April 17) that some of the worst tyrants and torturers of the old regime are probably being employed by the Garner administration, with no questions asked. READ

Zalmay Khalilzad: The Neocon's Bagman to Baghdad

Who? "Precisely," said a former associate of the 52-year-old Afghani American and Pashtun native who was appointed last December as the president's "special envoy and ambassador at large for free Iraqis." "Part of his genius is that the people who are supposed to know about him, don't even know he exists." According to the White House announcement, Khalilzad "will serve as the focal point for contacts and coordination among free Iraqis for the U.S. government and for preparations for a post-Saddam Iraq." Khalilzad's qualifications include not only advocating Saddam's ouster since the 1980s, but also his proven prowess in orchestrating the installation of the Hamid Karzai regime in Afghanistan after being appointed special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan in December 2001.
Khalilzad's oil credentials are no less impeccable than those of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who served on Chevron's board of directors. Like current Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Khalilzad was a paid adviser to UNOCAL Corp., a U.S. oil company that was competing for Taliban approval to construct a $2 billion gas and oil pipeline across Afghanistan. While Khalilzad worked at the for-profit Cambridge Energy Associates, he conducted a risk analysis for UNOCAL. By 1997 he was a participant in UNOCAL's negotiations with the Taliban. Moreover, as paid lobbyist for UNOCAL, he urged the Clinton administration to take a softer line on the Taliban. READ

Reason for War?: White House Officials Say Privately the Sept. 11 Attacks Changed Everything

To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy.
Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.
"We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."
…The Bush administration wanted to make a statement about its determination to fight terrorism. And officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target.
But what if Sept. 11 had never happened? Would the United States have gone to war with Iraq? Administration officials and others say no, at least not now.... READ

Impatient Justice: Congratulations. We've just won the wrong war.

"In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," President Bush announced Thursday night. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001." In the wake of that dark day, Bush recalled, "I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States." Saddam Hussein's defeat caps "19 months that changed the world," Bush concluded. "The war on terror is not over … but we have seen the turning of the tide."
In Bush's telling of the story, it all fits together. The war on terror gives meaning to the battle of Iraq. And the battle of Iraq demonstrates tangible success in the war on terror.
Except it doesn't. The two stories—Iraq and al-Qaida, the battle and the war—have never really meshed. Bush keeps saying they're the same thing. But saying doesn't make it so. READ

Bush Goes AWOL

One of the many maddening feats of this Administration is that in choosing to fight the war on terror by going to war with Iraq, George W. Bush has inspired new terrorist threats to the United States--according to the official testimony of his own CIA--where none existed. At the same time, he purposely starves those localities and institutions on which the complex and expensive task of terrorist protection ultimately falls.
... But as with Vietnam, "W" is AWOL and Cheney has "other priorities." They have not merely ignored "homeland" protection, they have sabotaged it. Shocking, yes. But don't take my word for it. A January Brookings Institution report explains, "President Bush vetoed several specific (and relatively cost-effective) measures proposed by Congress that would have addressed critical national vulnerabilities. As a result, the country remains more vulnerable than it should be today." A Council on Foreign Relations task force chaired by Gary Hart and Warren Rudman concurs: "America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil," it warns. READ

The Silence about September 11 by William Rivers Pitt

A pipeline project, aimed at exploiting massive natural gas reserves along the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan, was revived by the Bush administration when it arrived in Washington in January of 2001. The pipeline project, which sought to bring oil and natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to a warm water port, had been the brainchild of American petroleum giant Unocal for much of the 1990s. After the destruction of two American embassies in Africa in 1998 by Osama bin Laden, the Clinton administration forbade any American companies from doing business with the Taliban, which had been sheltering bin Laden in Afghanistan. Unocal's pipeline project was frozen.
After the Bush administration came to power, reinvigorating the pipeline project became a high-priority matter of policy. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was dispatched to Pakistan to discuss the pipeline with Taliban officials in August of 2001. Rocca, a career officer with the CIA, had been deeply involved in Agency activities within Afghanistan. A Pakistani foreign minister was present at the meeting, and witnessed the exchange.
How does this pipeline relate to September 11th? The main obstacle to the completion of the pipeline was the fact that it had to pass through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The project would receive no international support unless the Afghan government somehow became legitimized. In bargaining for the pipeline, the Bush administration demanded that the Taliban reinstate deposed King Mohammad Zahir Shah as ruler of Afghanistan, and demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden for arrest. In return, the Taliban would reap untold billions in profit from the pipeline. A central part of the Bush administration's bargaining tactics involved threats of war if these conditions for the legitimization of Afghanistan were not met. READ

Patriot Raid

Two weeks ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act.
... All of a sudden, there was a terrible commotion and five NYPD in bulletproof vests stormed down the stairs. They had their guns drawn and were pointing them indiscriminately at the restaurant staff and at us."Go to the back, go to the back of the restaurant," they yelled.I hesitated, lost in my own panic."Did you not hear me, go to the back and sit down," they demanded.I complied and looked around at the other patrons.
....When I asked to speak to a lawyer, the INS official informed me that I do have the right to a lawyer but I would have to be brought down to the station and await security clearance before being granted one. When I asked how long that would take, he replied with a coy smile: "Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month.
"We insisted that we had every right to leave and were going to do so. One of the policemen walked over with his hand on his gun and taunted: "Go ahead and leave, just go ahead." READ

S.F. activists sue over 'no-fly': Bid to end secrecy on government lists

Civil liberties advocates filed suit Tuesday on behalf of two San Francisco peace activists to try to pierce the cloud of secrecy surrounding "no-fly" lists that have snagged thousands of air travelers nationwide.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, seeks to require the Bush administration to reveal how many names are on the lists, how names are added and removed and how often they have been used to identify the wrong person.
... The ACLU said it sought the same information last December under the Freedom of Information Act, but the FBI replied that it had no such documents, and the Transportation Security Administration never replied.
Another question posed by the suit was whether the government is targeting political activists... READ

A mean-spirited America: Today, I fear my own government more than I do terrorists  

These days, a sense of apprehension and foreboding lurks in the back of my head and the pit of my stomach. It’s a gut-wrenching reminder that something very bad has happened and is about to happen anew. It is an anticipation of the next insult and injury in an America that has been defined under the Bush administration by a profound meanness of spirit.
...Yet to question this war and its aftermath is characterized as at worst treason and at best anti-American cynicism. And woe unto those who criticize Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root and the rest of the corporate sponsors of the Bush administration as they line up at the trough of government contracts to rebuild Iraq and control its oil. Now, the armed forces in Iraq have turned to shooting Iraqi demonstrators, the very people they supposedly came to “liberate” with democracy. READ

Bush on a revenge mission

American anger at France over its refusal to support war in Iraq reached new heights yesterday when President George Bush took a direct swipe at President Chirac.
"I doubt he'll be coming to the ranch any time soon," was Mr Bush's tart comment in an interview with NBC News, when asked about Jacques Chirac – a reference to the informal summits Mr Bush likes to hold with favoured foreign leaders at his cherished retreat in Crawford, Texas. Many in his administration – by implication, himself among them – had the impression "that the French position was anti-American", the President said.
The likely sanctions will include steps to marginalise France within Nato, and efforts to downgrade or even bar French participation in US- sponsored international meetings. Mr Bush is still planning to attend this June's G8 summit in Evian, France, though, and – despite earlier reports to the contrary – will be staying in France rather than Switzerland.
M. Chirac was not alone in the American doghouse. Mr Bush has put off a visit to Canada to signal his displeasure at Ottawa's refusal to provide troops for the invasion, while Mexico and Chile have been scolded for their failure, as members of the Security Council, to back a second UN resolution authorising force to topple Saddam Hussein. READ

Senator Snowe assails conservatives' attack ad

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe lashed back Tuesday at a conservative group running TV ads that attack her for opposing the size of President Bush's tax cut proposal.
In ads running this week in Maine, a tax-cut advocacy group called the Club for Growth questions Snowe's Republican Party loyalty, equating her opposition to Bush's proposal to French opposition to the U.S. war with Iraq.
Snowe, speaking to reporters following an appearance with Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, called the advertisements "abhorrent." READ

Pro-War Celebrities Bash Hollywood Anti-War Activists

Hollywood celebrities attending the 89th annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington on Saturday night made it a point to condemn celebrity anti-war activists.
Actor Kelsey Grammer, who plays the lead role in NBC's "Frasier" sitcom, said he refused to watch this year's Academy Awards because of the anti-war "crap" that fellow celebrities spewed. Jason Priestley of "Beverly Hills 90210" television fame, agreed with Grammer and lamented the excessive coverage of anti-war celebrities by what he termed the "liberal media." Actor Robert Duvall said he is not a fan of Michael Moore, and he lashed out at Hollywood political activists.
"They should keep their mouths shut," Duvall said. READ

Bursts of passion are only second-best as patriotism

It is difficult to keep track of everything subject to right-wing vilification, but at last count, the list included: France, Germany, the United Nations, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Tom Daschle, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, George Clooney, Martin Sheen, Syria, Iran, John Kerry, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Moore, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Hans Blix, Bill Clinton, Democrats, liberals, the Pope, Sean Penn, Barbara Streisand and Danny Glover. READ

Right-wing think tanks rule DC

CONSERVATIVE thinktanks exert a considerable influence over the Bush administration and the US media, with their right-wing agenda considerably at odds with the more moderate view of the State Department, analysts say.
Bodies such as the Heritage Foundation and the Hoover Institute have been influential since the days of the Reagan administration, and are now prominent again under President George W Bush. READ

Turner Calls Rival Media Mogul Murdoch 'Warmonger'

Ted Turner said on Thursday too few people owned too many media organizations and called rival media baron Rupert Murdoch a warmonger for what he said was Murdoch's promotion of the U.S. war in Iraq "The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much," Turner said.
Asked whether he would again try to launch a new network, Turner, who is the vice chairman of AOL Time Warner and has been critical of the merger of AOL and TimeWarner, said: "No. I think the space is filled with the people already there.
"There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It's not healthy." READ

BBC Head attacks 'unquestioning' US media

BBC director general Greg Dyke has delivered a stinging rebuke to the US media over its "unquestioning" coverage of the war in Iraq and warned the government against allowing the UK media to become "Americanised".
Mr Dyke said he was "shocked" to hear US radio giant Clear Channel had organised pro-war rallies in the US and urged the UK government to ensure new media laws did not allow American media companies to undermine the impartiality of the British media.
"We were genuinely shocked when we discovered the largest radio group in the United States was using its airwaves to organise pro-war rallies," said Mr Dyke. READ

Doctored Photo from the London Evening Standard

On 9 April 2003, the front page of the London Evening Standard (circulation: 400,000) contained a blurry image supposedly showing a throng of Iraqis in Baghdad celebrating the toppling of Saddam Hussein. What we are really looking at is an incredibly ham-fisted attempt at photo manipulation. READ

MSNBC Article on Bush "Misstatement" Pulled Off Site

While the fact that a big media outlet erased its own reporting to protect the powerful isn't a surprise (although it is still maddening), the big shock is that another tentacle of the corporate media called them on it. On 29 April 2003, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote:Did the news media feel that it was unpatriotic to question the administration's credibility? Some strange things certainly happened. For example, in September Mr. Bush cited an International Atomic Energy Agency report that he said showed that Saddam was only months from having nuclear weapons. "I don't know what more evidence we need," he said. In fact, the report said no such thing — and for a few hours the lead story on MSNBC's Web site bore the headline "White House: Bush Misstated Report on Iraq." Then the story vanished — not just from the top of the page, but from the site.READ

Remember When We Had Elections?

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."—George W. Bush (December 18, 2000)
November 5, 2002—In a closely watched off-year election, amid near record-low voter turnout, Republicans gained control of the United States Senate. Today the party of George W. Bush, the current resident of the White House, presides over all three branches of the federal government.
Most Americans appear to believe that this was just another election. But there are reasons to fear that it may actually represent one of the final nails in the coffin of American democracy.
This extraordinary assertion is not merely an expression of partisan bitterness over the rightward drift of American politics. What is happening now is of far more historical and structural significance than a temporary shift in the relative power of the parties. As I propose to show, disturbing signs point toward the ongoing emergence of a fascist-style dictatorship in the US. READ

Who's Counting your Vote? Disturbing Facts about Who Makes the Voting Machines

"I have no question that somebody who's smart enough with a computer could probably rig it to mistabulate. Whether that has happened yet I don't know. It's going to be virtually undetectable if it's done correctly..." VIEW SITE http://www.blackboxvoting.com/

A Winning Machine By Thom Hartmann

The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska.Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election.
The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.com, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83 percent of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska." READ

Unequal Protection:  The rise of corporate dominance and theft of human rights a new book by Thom Hartmann

In Unequal Protection, author Thom Hartmann tells a compelling, can't-put-it-down story that tracks the history of the loss of democracy in America. It starts with the birth of the modern corporation with the founding of the East India Company in 1600, through the Boston Tea Party revolt against transnational corporate domination of the early American economy, the rise of corporations during the Civil War, the ultimate theft of human rights before the Supreme Court in 1886, and into the modern-day theft of human rights in the US and worldwide by corporate interests and the politicians they own.
Because of a mistaken interpretation of a Supreme Court reporter's notes in an 1886 railroad tax case, corporations are now legally considered "persons," equal to humans and entitled to many of the sameprotections guaranteed only to humans by the Bill of Rights - a clear contradiction of the intent of the Founders of the United States. VIEW SITE

Firm in Florida Election Fiasco Earns Millions from Files on Foreigners

A data-gathering company that was embroiled in the Florida 2000 election fiasco is being paid millions of dollars by the Bush administration to collect detailed personal information on the populations of foreign countries, enraging several governments who say the records may have been illegally obtained.
US government purchasing documents show that the company, ChoicePoint, received at least $11m (£6.86m) from the department of justice last year to supply data - mainly on Latin Americans - that included names and addresses, occupations, dates of birth, passport numbers and "physical description". Even tax records and blood groups are reportedly included.
...The controversy is not the first to engulf ChoicePoint. The company's subsidiary, Database Technologies, was responsible for bungling an overhaul of Florida's voter registration records, with the result that thousands of people, disproportionately black, were disenfranchised in the 2000 election. Had they been able to vote, they might have swung the state, and thus the presidency, for Al Gore, who lost in Florida by a few hundred votes. READ

GOP Not Anti-Gay Enough, Says Group (CWA)

The rabidly anti-gay group Concerned Women for America has condemned the chairman of the Republican Party for meeting with representatives of the Human Rights Campaign and for not being more forcefully supportive of embattled Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
In a letter to Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot, the CWA's Sandy Rios said the GOP should not be flirting with what she described as "sexual anarchy." READ

Concerned Women for America Web Site

CWA is built on prayer and action. We are the nation's largest public policy women's organization with a rich 22-year history of helping our members across the country bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy.
Definition of the Family: CWA believes the traditional family consists of one man and one woman joined in marriage, along with any children they may have. We seek to protect traditional values that support the Biblical design of the family.
National Sovereignty: CWA believes that neither the United Nations nor any other international organization should have authority over the United States in any area, including economics, social policy, military, and land ownership.READ

Deep Throat 'unmasked' after 30 years
Nixon: Watergate revelations forced his resignation

Deep Throat, the secret source who tipped off journalists about the Watergate scandal, has been identified as former White House lawyer Fred Fielding.
Bill Gaines, Professor of journalism at the University of Illinois, who led the four-year study by a team of 60 student researchers, claimed Mr Fielding fits all the characteristics of the mystery figure who exposed President Richard Nixon's dirty tricks campaign against his political opponents. READ

Joe McCarthy Secret Hearings to Be Unveiled Monday (05/05/03)

...Some 5,000 pages of 1953-1954 closed-door hearings from McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will be released Monday by Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican. Levin and Collins have both chaired McCarthy's former committee during the past two years as the documents were prepared for release....Historians believe the five volumes of transcripts will shed light on what many regard as one of the most shameful episodes in Senate history -- a time when Cold War anxiety about the Soviet Union, Communist China and a perceived domestic Communist threat led to political witch hunts at home. READ

While senator, Wellstone got at least 6 death threats

On Oct. 3, 1995, a man left a voice mail message for Sen. Paul Wellstone.
"The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat," he said. "Wellstone ought to have a bullet between his eyes."
Wellstone, D-Minn., received at least a half-dozen death threats from anonymous callers during his 12 years in the Senate, according to FBI records made public Wednesday.
In one instance, in February 1995, the FBI provided protection for the senator after a caller left a message saying he was watching Wellstone, "and I'm going to kill you within the week." READ

House Dems Pledge to Help Colleagues

House Democrats are pledging not to repeat the mistake of the 2002 elections when lawmakers in safe districts ended the campaign season sitting on $60 million in unspent campaign money.
This time, Democratic campaign leaders are asking their colleagues to contribute early and often. So far, the results dwarf those of two years ago. Democratic lawmakers have transferred $2.1 million from their accounts to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the first three months of the year. In 2001, the amount was less than $650,000.Overall, the committee raised $7.4 million in the first quarter, a third of what its Republican counterpart took in. READ

Howard Dean and His American Dream Team

...Dean appears to be building a nationwide constituency, though not by "sheer shoe leather." Dean has collected more than 18,000 supporters online at Meetup.com, a free Web-based tool designed to facilitate monthly group meetings around various topics. Though not a scientific measure of electoral appeal, Meetup provides a mechanism for Dean enthusiasts to self-organize.READ

Bush: It's Not Just His Doctrine That's Wrong by Howard Dean

When Congress approved the President’s authorization to go to war in Iraq – no matter how well-intentioned – it was giving the green light to the President to set his Doctrine of preemptive war in motion. It now appears that Iraq was just the first step. Already, the Bush Administration is apparently eyeing Syria and Iran as the next countries on its target list. The Bush Doctrine must be stopped here.
...The President who campaigned on a platform of a humble foreign policy has instead begun implementing a foreign policy characterized by dominance, arrogance and intimidation. The tidal wave of support and goodwill that engulfed us after the tragedy of 9/11 has dried up and been replaced by undercurrents of distrust, skepticism and hostility by many who had been among our closest allies. READ

Archives Marketing Iraq: Why now? 9/02

There's a big question hanging over President Bush's Iraq policy: Why now? Why, more than 11 years after the Gulf War, is it suddenly so urgent for the U.S. to go after Saddam Hussein now?
Some people are asking, is President Bush's Iraq offensive being driven by the fall election? An idea the vice president calls ``reprehensible.''
"The suggestion that I find reprehensible is the notion that somehow, you know, we saved this and now we've sprung it on them for political reasons," Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" last week.
But some people in very high places are warning that a life-and-death policy like Iraq "must not be a simple matter of political convenience, " as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday. READ

THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: Publications and Reports 2000

"Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century," September 2000. A Report of the Project for the New American Century. Authored in 2000 with the help of Wolfowitz, Cheney and Perle, this report gave birth to the The National Security Strategy of the United States of America of 2002 which laid the official foreign policy groundwork for the invasion of Iraq (PDF file can be downloaded from this index) READ

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America 2002

This report laid the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq by stating that preemptive attacks against potentially dangerous governements where now officially a part of U.S. foriegn policy. (The Bush Doctrine) READ

Prove Iraqi guilt, MPs tell Blair

Tony Blair is facing the threat of a fresh rebellion from Labour backbenchers who are growing increasingly alarmed that the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will confirm that the war was illegal.
... Backbench Labour MPs who feel they were duped into backing the war on the basis of questionable intelligence want the cross-party Commons intelligence and security committee to carry out an investigation. One well-placed former minister said: "The intelligence committee is raring to challenge the veracity of what the security services told them about Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons. They were told what he had and where it was. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation for all this, but they don't seem to be able to find the stuff."
... Lindsay Hoyle, the Labour MP for Chorley, who voted in favour of war because of Mr Blair's chilling warnings about Iraq's banned weapons, said: "We were led to believe that the Iraqis could fire them within 45 minutes. If that was the case where have they vanished to? We were told there was hard evidence." READ

Coalition Controls All Iraqi Oil Fields

All oil fields in Iraq now fall within areas controlled by the U.S. coalition, but it will likely be at least a few weeks before crude is flowing from Iraq again, an American general said Monday. READ

No Profits for Profiteers

Thanks to the Center for Public Integrity's recent investigation we now know that at least nine of the thirty members of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--a non-elected group that is central in the formulation of US foreign policy--are linked to companies that were awarded more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002 alone. (We're also likely to see many of the same corporations--like the Bechtel Group--that made hundreds of millions of dollars doing business with what they knew was a murderous Iraqi regime receive billons of dollars worth of contracts to now rebuild Iraq.) READ

Bechtel Wins Iraq Reconstruction Contract

Bechtel Corp., a politically active corporation with wide experience overseas, has won a competition to help rebuild Iraq under a contract that could grow to $680 million.
The San Francisco construction and engineering company will receive $34.6 million to start work under Thursday's award, but could earn the larger figure over 18 months if Congress approves the funds.
Several Democratic lawmakers have criticized the fast-track bidding process that allowed only a few experienced companies to submit proposals. The U.S. Agency for International Development has controlled the bidding, saying speed was essential to meet Iraq's pressing postwar needs. READ

Are you better off than you were 2 years ago?

Some number crunching on the subject of unemployment, the value of the stock market and the national debt under the last three administrations. READ

DNC Quiz: The Bush Tax Scheme

With unemployment on the rise and states facing serious fiscal crises, Democrats have introduced a responsible stimulus plan that offers real tax relief to working families. But President Bush continues to push his irresponsible tax giveaway to the wealthiest sliver of Americans. The Bush plan creates budget-busting record deficits while providing virtually no stimulus to the economy.
Test your knowledge of the Bush tax scheme by taking our quiz. GO

Poll Finds Opposition to More Tax Cuts

Six in 10 Americans say they are against more tax cuts when the country is at war and already faces budget deficits, according to an Associated Press poll. Still, half of all Americans say their taxes are too high.
The poll, taken in the days before Tuesday's tax deadline, found that 61 percent say it would be better to hold off on additional tax cuts right now to avoid making budget deficits worse and ensure there is adequate money to pay for the war. READ

THE 2003 JEFFERSON MUZZLE AWARDS

Since 1992, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has celebrated the birth and ideals of its namesake by calling attention to those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson's admonition that freedom of speech "cannot be limited without being lost."
Announced on or near April 13 -- the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson -- the Jefferson Muzzles are awarded as a means to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech and press and, at the same time, foster an appreciation for those tenets of the First Amendment. Because the importance and value of free expression extend far beyond the First Amendment's limit on government censorship, acts of private censorship are not spared consideration for the dubious honor of receiving a Muzzle. READ

The moral decline of a superpower by Günter Grass

A war long sought and planned is now under way. All deliberations and warnings of the United Nations notwithstanding, an overpowering military apparatus has attacked preemptively in violation of international law. No objections were heeded. The Security Council was disdained and scorned as irrelevant. As the bombs fall and the battle for Baghdad continues, the law of might prevails.
Based on this injustice, the mighty have the power to buy and reward those who might be willing and to disdain and even punish the unwilling. The words of the current American president - "Those who are not with us are against us" - weigh on current events with the resonance of barbaric times.
It is hardly surprising that the rhetoric of the aggressor increasingly resembles that of his enemy. Religious fundamentalism leads both sides to abuse what belongs to all religions, taking the notion of God hostage in accordance with their own fanatical understanding. Even the passionate warnings of the Pope, who knows how lasting and devastating the disasters wrought by the mentality and actions of Christian crusaders have been, were unsuccessful. READ

Conservative Crybabies: Nothing worse than a sore winner.

I’ve never heard or read the work of right-wing radio-talk-show host Michael Savage, but the subtitle of his best-selling book, Savage Nation, tells me he must be some kind of simpering sissy wimp. It reads: “Saving America from the liberal assault on our borders, language, and culture.”
Excuse me? Liberalism isn’t assaulting anyone these days. It’s barely alive. It’s a bubble boy on life support in the coma ward. Liberalism a threat? To whom, Bambi?
It’s beyond me why conservatives just don’t declare victory. Why are they so aggrieved? Because they were driving their SUV and some hippie called them names? Boo-hoo.
The mainstream right has won. By that I mean the ravenous, talk-radio, corporate kiss-ass right. It tells you everything you need to know about them that they’re not happy with mere victory. They require an extermination. READ

Madonna's 'American Life' Reborn

The first video from her new "American Life" album — which comes out Tuesday — featured explosions, a runway show of couture army fatigues and Madonna dancing in a military uniform. At the end, she threw what looked like a hand grenade into the lap of a President Bush look-alike. ...
When Madonna decided not to release the original version earlier this month, she said: "Due to the volatile state of the world and out of sensitivity and respect to the armed forces, who I support and pray for, I do not want to risk offending anyone who might misinterpret the meaning of this video."
But in a VH1 special that aired before the video's debut, the 44-year-old singer said she was frustrated that some celebrities who express antiwar sentiments are suffering a backlash. READ

Sony Files for Trademark War Catchphrase 'Shock and Awe' As Title of Video Game

A day after U.S. allied forces marched into Iraq, Sony applied for a trademark on the war's catchphrase, "shock and awe," for use as the title of a video game, according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
...Sony was not the only company hoping to profit from the label. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office has more than a dozen recent applications for uses of the phrase, including for fireworks, lingerie, baby toys, shampoo and consulting services. READ

Conservatives Attack Two GOP Senators With Electronically Doctored Images

...With the help of a little digital wizardry, the conservative Club for Growth is airing ads showing Republican Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and George V. Voinovich (Ohio) in proximity to French flags in order to disparage their resistance to President Bush's tax-cut plans.
...The TV ads, which will run for 10 days in Maine and Ohio, recall France's opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They go on to say "some so-called Republicans," naming Snowe in the Maine ads and Voinovich in the Ohio ads, "stand in the way" of Bush's tax-cutting plans at home. Digitally inserted French flags flutter beside the senators' images. READ

The Nuremberg tribunal and the role of the media

The ongoing US aggression in the Middle East raises the most serious questions about the role of the mass media in modern society. In the period leading up to the invasion, the American media uncritically advanced the Bush administration’s arguments, rooted in lies, distortions and half-truths, for an attack on Iraq. It virtually excluded all critical viewpoints, to the point of blacking out news of mass antiwar demonstrations and any other facts that contradicted the propaganda from the White House and Pentagon.
The obvious aim was to misinform and manipulate public opinion, and convince the tens of millions within the US who were opposed to the administration’s war policy that they constituted a small and helpless minority.
...This makes the US media an accessory before and after the fact to crimes carried out in Iraq and future crimes against other peoples in the region and around the world. Sitting far from the ravaged Iraqi cities, in well-appointed boardrooms, the media moguls may believe they will never face such charges. There are, however, historical parallels and precedents to the contrary. READ

U.S. media losing global respect

Ultimately, the problem is two-fold: First, major corporate media all mimic each other — which means that they are increasingly less willing to going beyond the implicit consensus on almost any debate. The reason for this herd mentality is simple.
In fact, it's the same as with all those economists who seek to forecast future growth by always staying inside the "consensus." As long as they don't stick their necks out, these people believe, nobody can berate them for getting out of line.
The second problem is that the same herd effect also works in reverse, making the whole U.S. media business, especially in print and cable news reporting, highly pro-cyclical.
What this means in practical terms is that the media tend to enhance, rather than counter, the preconceptions and viewing preferences of the public-at-large. READ

Media-ownership deregulation debate heats up

...But critics point to 1996 telecommunications legislation that eliminated national ownership mandates for radio.
Schakowsky said the largest owner of radio stations, Clear Channel Communications, barred ads opposing the war in Iraq, while promoting rallies for the war and the military and limited news coverage of antiwar protests. It wouldn't be so important, she said, if it weren't for the fact that Clear Channel now owns 20 percent of radio stations nationwide. READ

Radio host organizing pro-U.S. rallies

Flag-draped "Rallies for America" across the country are drawing thousands of people to demonstrate support for U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf -- a less visible counterpoint to the large crowds who have flocked to antiwar protests.
Many of the pro-military gatherings were originated by syndicated radio host Glenn Beck, whose Philadelphia-based show is heard in more than 100 markets. There have been nearly 20 in recent weeks, with organizers estimating total attendance into the tens of thousands.
...Rally-goers in red, white and blue sang patriotic songs, waved signs and cheered at photos of President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others. On the stage was a giant American flag and a replica of the Statue of Liberty. READ

Channels of influence

...The company says the demonstrations, which go under the name Rally for America, reflect the initiative of individual stations. But this is unlikely: According to Eric Boehlert, who has written revelatory articles about Clear Channel in the online magazine Salon, the company is notorious - and widely hated - for its iron-fisted centralized control.
... On one side, Clear Channel is feeling some heat: It is being sued over allegations that it threatens to curtail the airplay of artists who don't tour with its concert division, and there are even some politicians who want to roll back the deregulation that made the company's growth possible. On the other side, the Federal Communications Commission is considering further deregulation that would allow Clear Channel to expand even further, particularly into television. READ

Murky Channel

Constitutional free-speech guarantees should and do protect radio-station owners in the United States who wish to use their outlets to boost the administration's war effort. It is far from healthy, however, for the few corporations that now own most U.S.commercial radio stations to flack for George W. Bush's blinkered foreign policy even as the Federal Communications Commission writes the regulations on the number of stations any one company can own.
Clear Channel Communications, owner of over 1,200 stations, has promoted 18 "Rally for America!" events in recent weeks to counter antiwar protests. ...That's fine in itself, but it is not so fine that Clear Channel and a few other broadcast monoliths have closed their airwaves to performers and musicians who have been critical of the war and Mr. Bush. Some Clear Channel stations and all of Cumulus Media's stations stopped playing the popular Dixie Chicks after their lead singer, Natalie Maines, told a London concert audience, "We're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." READ

Prime Time Payola: Is Clear Channel buying political favors with pro-war fanaticism?

A feverish, corporate-sponsored nationalism has taken root in America at a time when the public depends on a vibrant communications culture to sustain its institutional democracy. Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of Clear Channel Communications, the nation’s largest radio chain.
... In one of his first bureaucratic decisions as president, Bush named Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. That the son of one of the nation’s most decorated and politically entrenched former military officers should be given control of the agency that regulates the domestic news and entertainment networks—indeed the whole telecommunications industry—is something that is more imaginable in … well, Iraq.
... Just days after the 9/11 attacks, slates of blacklisted songs, including Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train” and John Lennon’s “Imagine,” were leaked to the public. But it was not until the invasion of Iraq that Clear Channel really kicked into high gear. Facing the massive public outcry and protests against the war, the network began sponsoring pro-war rallies called “Rally for America.” Using its 1,200 stations, Clear Channel pummeled listeners with a mind-numbing stream of uncritical “patriotism.” Finally, there was the recent and gleeful banning of Dixie Chicks songs from several prominent Clear Channel stations after singer Natalie Maines made derogatory remarks about George W. Bush.