In a stunning blow to the president's credibility, CIA Director George Tenet said this morning that intelligence "analysts never said there was an imminent threat" from Iraq before the war. His comments are consistent with various warnings sent to the White House from the intelligence community that specifically told the president his claims that Iraq definitely had chemical/biological and nuclear weapons were unsubstantiated. Tenet's comments call into question whether the Bush Administration was knowingly ignoring intelligence and misleading the country by claiming definitively that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was therefore an "imminent,"
"immediate," "urgent" and "mortal" threat to the American people.
Though the White House has claimed it never said Iraq was an imminent threat, the record proves otherwise. When White House communications director Dan Bartlett was asked before the war whether Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat, he responded, "Of course he is." When White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked why NATO (and thus the United States) should support Turkey's request for defensive troops, he responded, "This is about an imminent threat." When White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether the invasion of Iraq was because Iraq was an imminent threat, he responded, "Absolutely."
The president also used other language aimed at misleading Americans into thinking that U.S. intelligence definitively knew Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that threatened America - even though the intelligence community told the president it had no such evidence. The president said before the war that Iraq was an "urgent threat" and a "grave threat" to "any American."
In his speech informing Americans that the invasion had started, the President said Iraq "threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
These comments were echoed by other top Administration officials. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on September 19, 2002 that "no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
And Vice President Cheney called Iraq a "mortal threat," and said "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction...to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." And Secretary of State Colin Powell, in pressing for U.N. support, said definitively that Iraq possessed "deadly weapons programs" that "are real and present dangers to the region and to the world."
TENET EXPOSES BUSH'S MISLEADING ON WMD
Education Programs Face the Ax
LOS ANGELES TIMES
More than half the 65 federal programs that President Bush wants to kill next year are related to education, a move that could further inflame Democratic detractors who for the last year have been questioning his commitment to education.
Bush proposed eliminating the programs Monday as he sent Congress his budget plan for fiscal 2005, which begins in October. The White House said that killing the 65 programs would save a projected $4.9 billion, a small amount compared to this year's record $521-billion deficit.
It is far from clear, however, that Congress will go along with Bush's blueprint. The president has tried to kill some of the same projects before, but Congress has kept funding them.
Of the 65 programs targeted this time around, 38 are in the Department of Education, according to the president's budget document. They account for $1.4 billion in projected savings.
Overall, the president is seeking $57.3 billion for the Department of Education, which many previous Republican administrations and GOP-controlled Congresses have sought to eliminate altogether. That amount represents a $1.7 billion increase, or 3%, over the fiscal year 2004 level.
Although Josh Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget in the White House, announced at a briefing Monday that Bush wanted to terminate the 65 programs, his office declined to release a complete list of the programs, leaving activists for education, housing and labor programs scrambling to learn the fate of their favorite endeavors.
Bolten said 63 additional "major" programs faced significant spending reductions.
The projects Bush would eliminate included a $246-million effort to improve early childhood education in low-income neighborhoods and a $174-million program to foster learning in large high schools. Also targeted are programs that help gifted and talented students, promote arts in education and attempt to stop students from dropping out.
A White House spokesman said many of the programs were "well-meaning," but also duplicative or no longer useful.
"This president's philosophy is to provide maximum flexibility and block-grant dollars to state and local school districts to design what they feel they need to educate their students, in line with the No Child Left Behind Act," said Trent Duffy, deputy White House press secretary.
But lawmakers on Capitol Hill may have different ideas.
For instance, Bush a year ago proposed killing an 11-year-old Department of Housing and Urban Development program known as Hope VI, which at one time dispersed as much as $500 million a year to public housing authorities around the country to help them raze dilapidated structures. But Congress kept Hope VI alive by appropriating $150 million for the effort, HUD spokeswoman Donna White said.
Bush is seeking again to end funding for the program, which has been awarded a total of about $5 billion since its inception.
While "Hope VI has done a wonderful job," Duffy said, a parallel effort known as the HOME program is producing "a much better result in getting people into housing — faster and at less cost per unit." Duffy conceded that killing a program is difficult in Washington, given the constituencies they acquire around the country.
Other efforts marked for extinction include a $6-million program to improve rural housing and a $170-million initiative to promote technology development.
Duffy said that the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program, a government-industry partnership to enable and accelerate the development of emerging technologies, is no longer needed. He said the program was timely when it was created in the 1980s, but is unnecessary now because U.S. technological know-how is "very competitive in the world market."
A year ago, Bush proposed cutting the effort's funding to $27 million, but Congress appropriated $170 million, said Connie Partoyan, a top Commerce Department official.
Also on Bush's chopping block is the $6-million Rural Community Development Initiative. The Department of Agriculture program seeks to provide technical assistance to promote housing and economic development in rural areas.
Education activists on Monday protested the White House proposal to cut those programs. Among them was Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), who worked with Bush to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, which imposed new testing and accountability standards for public schools.
Miller, along with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), since has accused the president of not following through on his commitment to the act.
"President Bush had to choose between honoring his word to public schools, veterans, college students and Americans looking for jobs, and giving billions more in tax cuts to the richest Americans," Miller said Monday. "His budget makes it clear that he chose to honor the richest Americans, who have not been asked to make one sacrifice during the president's tenure in office."
The National Education Assn. also lambasted Bush for what it said was insufficient education funding. The group's president, Reg Weaver, said the NEA was "profoundly disappointed" that Bush had proposed the smallest increase for education in seven years — "at a time when schools and states are being hammered by budget cutbacks and rising demands."
Weak labor market taking toll on weekly and hourly wage growth
Continued high unemployment and the lack of meaningful job growth made 2003 the worst year for weekly wage growth for the typical worker since 1996. This clearly indicates that the weak labor market is now hurting employed workers as well as those looking for work. In 2003, real (inflation-adjusted) weekly wages fell for low- and middle-wage men and were stagnant or fell slightly for low- and middle-wage women. This trend is in sharp contrast to the significant and sustained real wage growth over the 1995-2002 period when unemployment was falling (see chart below). Despite the acceleration of gross domestic product (GDP) growth in late 2003, the wage growth of production, non-supervisory workers (over 80% of the workforce) actually slowed in this period.
Bush Administration's tax cuts falling short in job creation
The Bush Administration called the tax cut package, which was passed in May 2003 and took effect in July 2003, its "Jobs and Growth Plan." The president's economics staff, the Council of Economic Advisers projected that the plan would result in the creation of 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004—306,000 new jobs each month, starting in July 2003. Although jobs increased by 112,000 in the month of January 2004, the "Jobs and Growth Plan" still fell 194,000 jobs short of the administration's projection. (Actually, job gains in the month of January were less than 30,000 once seasonal adjustment problems for retail hiring and strike effects are removed.) The administration projected that a total of 2,142,000 jobs would be created in the first seven months after the tax cuts took effect. In fact, only 296,000 jobs were created over that period for a cumulative shortfall of 1,846,000 jobs.
Greatest sustained job loss since the Great Depression
Since the recession began 34 months ago in March 2001, 2.4 million jobs have disappeared, a 1.8% contraction. The Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting monthly jobs data in 1939 (at the end of the Great Depression). In every previous episode of recession and job decline since 1939, the number of jobs had fully recovered to above the pre-recession peak within 31 months of the start of the recession. Today's labor market would have an additional 3.88 million jobs if jobs had grown by the 0.7% rate that occurred in the early 1990s recession and so-called "jobless recovery," the worst record prior to this current period. The picture is bleaker for private-sector jobs, which have dropped by 2.9 million since March 2001, a 2.5% contraction. (See state data and organizations for more information on your state.)
Since the official end of the recession in November 2001, total jobs have shrunk by 0.7 million (an 0.5% contraction) and private-sector jobs have dropped by 0.9 million (or 0.8%).
Children's Defense Fund Analysis shows Bush Administration Budget Takes from Poor Children to Give to the Rich
The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) today released an analysis showing that the Bush Administration's proposed budget puts millions of poor children at risk by not adequately funding vital programs that provide for some of their most basic needs. The Bush budget presents a reckless plan to expand tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the most vulnerable Americans - including the 12.1 million children who live below the poverty line.
The CDF analysis highlights Administration choices that:
fail to meet the basic needs of children in health care, housing, child care, child nutrition, and child abuse and neglect;
deny key supports and services for low-income working families such as child care assistance, housing vouchers, and afterschool programs;
leave children behind by cutting many education programs and underfunding its own No Child Left Behind Act by $9.4 billion;
allow children and adolescents to fall through the cracks by failing to invest in families in crisis and juvenile services ; and
back away from federal government responsibilities to help our most vulnerable citizens by promoting block grants in Head Start, housing, health care, and child welfare programs.
"The Bush Administration's budget plays 'Robin Hood in reverse' by taking from programs that serve the most fundamental needs of children, while giving more money to the rich," said Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children's Defense Fund. "Permanent tax cuts for the wealthy should not come at the expense of our children, especially the ones with the greatest needs. For less than one-third the cost of making the tax cuts permanent we could provide health insurance to America's 9 million uninsured children, provide Head Start for every eligible child, and pay the salaries of 100,000 more teachers to reduce class size. Instead this year's budget further cuts children's access to child care, affordable housing, and underfunds education for disadvantaged children. For the sake of our children, we count on Congress to reject this ill-advised budget."
"We do not have a money problem in this country; we have a priorities problem," said Edelman. "The Administration uses the soothing rhetoric of 'no child left behind,' but in reality pushes millions of poor children even farther behind."
National Lawyers Guild Target of FBI Subpoena
DES MOINES REGISTER
The National Lawyers Guild will move to quash an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force subpoena issued on Wednesday, February 4, 2004. The subpoena asks Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, to produce all records relating to a November 15, 2003 antiwar conference at Drake University called "Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard Home!" The conference was sponsored by the Drake Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and was followed the next day by a demonstration at the Iowa National Guard Headquarters in Johnston, at which 12 protestors were arrested on misdemeanor charges.
The subpoena asks Drake University for all records relating to the November 15 conference, as well as information about leaders of the Drake University chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and the location of Guild offices and any annual reports since 2002. In addition, it asks for "all records of Drake University campus security reflecting any observations made of the November 15, 2003 meeting, including any records of persons in charge or control of the meeting, and any records of attendees of the meeting."
Guild President Michael Avery said, "The law is clear that the use of the grand jury to investigate protected political activities or to intimidate protestors exceeds its authority. The government has no business investigating legal conferences held in academic institutions."
On February 5, the federal investigation expanded as prosecutors subpoenaed a fourth activist to appear before a grand jury. Earlier subpoenas were directed to the former director of the Iowa Peace Network and members of the Catholic Peace Ministries. That same day, at the request of the U.S. attorney's office in Des Moines, U.S. District Judge Ronald Longstaff issued an order under seal that sources say prohibit Drake University employees from commenting on the earlier subpoena demanding university records.
"The subpoena has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with intimidating lawful protestors and suppressing First Amendment freedom of expression and association," said Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director of the Guild. "In the 1950s our members suffered harm from disclosure of their associational relationship with the Guild. The Guild is in the business of fighting illegal government activity and we will fight to protect our membership information. We will also work to support and defend the rights of the other activists targeted by these subpoenas."
The National Lawyers Guild, founded in 1937, comprises over 6,000 members and activists in the service of the people. Its national office is headquartered in New York and it has chapters in nearly every state, as well as over 100 law school chapters. Guild members provide legal support to progressive demonstrations throughout the country, and well understand the nationwide trend toward increasingly repressive measures deployed against political protesters.
Co-Chair of Bush Panel Part of Far Right Network
President George W. Bush's choice to co-chair his commission to investigate intelligence failures prior to the Iraq War is a long-time, right wing political activist closely tied to the neo-conservative network that led the pro-war propaganda campaign.
Federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman, who will share the chairmanship with former Virginia Democratic Senator Charles Robb, also has some history in covert operations.
In 1980, when he served as part of former Republican president Ronald Reagan's senior campaign staff, he played a key role in setting up secret contacts between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Islamic government in Tehran, in what became known as the ''October Surprise'' controversy.
(Former president George HW Bush, the current president's father, was Reagan's vice-president for two terms, 1981-89).
Rewarded with his appeals court judgeship several years later, Silberman helped advise right-wing activists during the 1990s on strategies for pursuing allegations of sexual misconduct by then-Democratic president Bill Clinton, according to various accounts.
Besides Silberman and Robb, a conservative Democrat who also has strong ties to neo-conservatives through the Democratic Leadership Council, Bush chose five other commission members and indicated that two more have yet to be named.
The five include Arizona Republican Senator John McCain; former White House counsel for Clinton and former president Jimmy Carter, Lloyd Cutler; Yale University President Richard Levin; former deputy Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, Admiral William Studeman and retired appeals court judge Pat Wald.
In announcing the panel, Bush rejected appeals by the opposition Democrats in Congress that they be given a role in deciding its membership in order to enhance its credibility.
He also appeared to limit the commission's mandate to study only the mistakes made by the intelligence community in assessing Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
Bush said the commission will submits its report by Mar. 31, 2005, well after the presidential elections in November.
''Last week, our former chief weapons inspector, David Kay ... stated that some pre-war intelligence assessments by America and other nations about Iraq's weapons stockpiles have not been confirmed'', Bush said. ''We are determined to find out why''.
Democrats said the mandate was too limited. ''The president is not allowing (the commission) to look into the growing number of questions millions of Americans are asking about the administration's statements and actions before the Iraq war'', said Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle. ''That investigation still needs to be done.”
Democrats have charged that political pressure from leading administration figures, notably Vice President Dick Cheney, contributed to the intelligence failures, as did officials' public exaggerations of the intelligence community's assessments in order to persuade the public to support the war.
Democrats and other analysts had also wanted the commission to take up the administration's pre-war charges that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein worked closely with the al-Qaeda terrorist group.
''The independent commission ... should seize upon its mandate to investigate 'related 21st century threats' and the biggest failure in the justification for the Iraq war: unproven allegations of links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein,'' said Charles Pena, a foreign-policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that has strongly opposed the Iraq war, despite its generally Republican orientation.
Yet, Bush's appointments surprised several observers by their ideological diversity and reputations for independence.
''Overall, this is a much more professional, much more balanced group than I expected'', said Mel Goodman, a former top Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, who has frequently charged the administration with distorting and exaggerating the intelligence on Iraq.
''It looks like the pragmatists in the White House must have said, 'it's important that we get good names, so we're not attacked','' added Goodman, who teaches at the National War College. He said much will now depend on who is appointed as the panel's staff director.
While a Republican who has often taken neo-conservative positions, McCain, who opposed Bush in the 2000 Republican primary elections and has frequently clashed with him on key issues, is considered fiercely independent.
During his tenure at the CIA, Studeman was well respected among analysts. In contrast to a number of other senior officials, ''Studeman was an honest man'', said Goodman, whose public charges that former CIA chief Robert Gates had slanted assessments of Soviet power and intentions in the late 1980s created a sensation in Washington.
Cutler, a top adviser to both Carter and Clinton, has enjoyed a strong reputation for independence and thoughtfulness over several decades, while Wald, who was appointed to the bench by Carter, is considered a strong-willed liberal Democrat, who after retirement served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
The appointment of both Silberman and Wald to the commission is seen as particularly curious, because they are known not to get along. In his controversial book, 'Blinded by the Right', former right-wing journalist David Brock said Silberman gave ''false information'' to him about Wald whom, according to Brock, ''(Silberman) hated with a passion''.
Brock depicts Silberman as a major, if discreet, figure in the right-wing network that harassed Bill and Hillary Clinton for various alleged scandals during the 1990s. Brock, who describes Silberman as his ''mentor'', has since admitted that many of his attacks on Democrats were based on little or no evidence.
''A consummate Washington insider for more than two decades'', Brock wrote, ''Larry would often preface his advice to me with the wry demurrer that judges shouldn't get involved in politics -- 'that would be improper', he'd say -- and then go ahead anyway”.
”He was a behind-the-scenes adviser to the conservative editors of the 'Wall Street Journal' editorial page, and he delighted his conservative audiences with his acid critiques of the liberal press,” added Brock.
Silberman has also reportedly been known as aggressive and sometimes abusive, even in his written opinions. He once accused Clinton of ''declaring war on the United States'' by permitting his aides to attack Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in the Whitewater case, while, during an argument with another appeals court judge, he is reported to have said, ''if you were 10 years younger, I'd be tempted to punch you in the nose''.
But it is his role in the 1980 election that is perhaps most intriguing about Silberman's appointment.
He is alleged to have set up and participated in a mysterious meeting in Washington on Oct. 2, 1980 -- one month before the election -- with Reagan's top foreign policy adviser, then-Marine Lieutenant Colonel Robert McFarlane (Reagan's national security adviser during the Iran-Contra scandal), and at least one Iranian arms dealer.
It was the culmination of a series of secret meetings -- never reported to the U.S. government -- between Reagan campaign officials and Iranians who purported to represent the government of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The precise purpose of those meetings has never been resolved, but one school of thought, propounded most effectively in the early 1980s by Carter's top National Security Council adviser on Iran, was that the Republican campaign was trying to ensure that Tehran would not make a deal with Carter to release U.S. Embassy hostages who were being held in Iran until after the November elections.
In return, Iran would be covertly supplied with U.S.-made weapons via Israeli middlemen, according to the theory.
Reagan officials, including Silberman, have vehemently denied this version of events.
Nonetheless, it appears that Silberman was a key conduit to Iran during the early 1980s.
According to one source, after he received his judicial appointment, Silberman passed along his Iranian contacts to Michael Ledeen, a close associate of Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), who played a key role with McFarlane in the transfer of U.S. weapons to Tehran in the deal that gave rise to the Iran-Contra scandal.
Several years later, Silberman cast the deciding vote on a three-judge panel in a decision that resulted in dismissing the criminal convictions of Admiral John Poindexter and Lt Col Oliver North for lying to Congress in connection with the scandal.
Ashcroft trying to get his hands on women's medical records
In an ominous attack on women's reproductive rights, Attorney General John Ashcroft is trying to subpoena the medical records of patients who received so-called "partial-birth" abortions from seven physicians and at least five hospitals in the Midwest, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
At least one of the doctors targeted is challenging the constitutionality of Bush's Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 — the law passed by Congress and signed by George W. Bush (while surrounded by men) that criminalizes an abortion procedure with no exception to save a woman's life or preserve her health.
A U.S. Federal federal judge in Chicago has stopped the request to obtain the records from Northwestern University Hospital, stating that it was a "significant intrusion" on patients' privacy — but another judge, in New York, is threatening to let the subpoenas proceed. Ashcroft himself has defended his requests as "essential."
It is outrageous — and horrifying — that John Ashcroft would try to pry into personal medical records in the course of trying to defend a law that undermines our constitutional rights.
Speak up and protest this latest example of George Bush's attacks on our right to choose! Make plans to march with us at the March for Women's Lives in Washington DC on April 25th, or join us in the Virtual March.
Open Letter to U.N. and George W. Bush
Dear Secretary General Annan,
U.S. President George W. Bush again confirmed his intention to continue waging wars of aggression in his State of the Union message on January 20, 2004.
He began his address:
“ As we gather tonight, hundreds of thousands of American service men and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed, and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure.”
He proclaimed:
“ Our greatest responsibility is the active defense of the American people... America is on the offensive against the terrorists...”
Continuing, he said:
“ ...our coalition is leading aggressive raids against the surviving members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.... Men who ran away from our troops in battle are now dispersed and attack from the shadows.”
In Iraq, he reported:
“ Of the top 55 officials of the former regime, we have captured or killed 45. Our forces are on the offensive, leading over 1,600 patrols a day, and conducting an average of 180 raids a week....”
Explaining his aggression, President Bush stated:
“ ...After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States and war is what they got.”
Forget law. No more legal papers, or rights. Forget truth. The claim that either Afghanistan, or Iraq declared war on the U.S. is absurd. The U.S. chose to attack both nations, from one end to the other, violating their sovereignty and changing their "regimes", summarily executing thousands of men, women and children in the process. At least 40,000 defenseless people in Iraq have been killed by U.S. violence since the latest aggression began in earnest in March 2003 starting with its celebrated, high tech, terrorist "Shock and Awe" and continuing until now with 25, or more, U.S. raids daily causing mounting deaths and injuries.
All this death-dealing aggression has occurred during a period, Mr. Bush boasts, of "over two years without an attack on American soil". The U.S. is guilty of pure aggression, arbitrary repression and false portrayal of the nature and purpose of its violence.
President Bush's brutish mentality is revealed in his condemnations of the "killers" and "thugs in Iraq" "who ran away from our troops in battle". U.S. military expenditures and technology threaten and impoverish life on the planet. Any army that sought to stand up against U.S. air power and weapons of mass destruction in open battle would be annihilated. This is what President Bush seeks when he says "Bring 'em on."
President Bush declared his intention to change the "Middle East" by force.
“ As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny and despair and anger, it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends. So America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror, and expect a higher standard from our friends.”
“...America is a nation with a mission... we understand our special calling: This great republic will lead the cause of freedom.”
He extended his threat to any nation he may choose:
“ As part of the offensive against terror, we are also confronting the regimes that harbor and support terrorists, and could supply them with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. The United States and our allies are determined: We refuse to live in the shadow of this ultimate danger.”
President Bush's utter contempt for the United Nations is revealed in his assertion that the United States and other countries "have enforced the demands of the United Nations", ignoring the refusal of the U.N. to approve a war of aggression against Iraq and implying the U.N. had neither the courage nor the capacity to pursue its own "demands".
His total commitment to unilateral U.S. action, was asserted by President Bush when he sarcastically referred to the "permission slip" a school child needs to leave a classroom:
" America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people".
President Bush intends to go it alone, because his interest is American power and wealth alone, though he prefers to use the youth of NATO countries and others as cannon folder in his wars.
President Bush believes might makes right and that the end justifies the means. He declares:
“ ...the world without Saddam Husseins regime is a better and safer place".
So U.S. military technology which is omnicidal- capable of destroying all life on the planet-will be ordered by President Bush to make the world "a better and safer place" by destroying nations and individuals he designates.
President Bush presided over 152 executions in Texas, far more than any other U.S. governor since World War II. Included were women, minors, retarded persons, aliens in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and innocent persons. He never acted to prevent a single execution. He has publicly proclaimed the right to assassinate foreign leaders and repeatedly boasted of summary executions and indiscriminate killing in State of the Union messages and elsewhere.
The danger of Bush unilateralism is further revealed when he states:
“ Colonel Qaddafi correctly judged that his country would be better off, and far more secure without weapons of mass murder. Nine months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not.”
Forget diplomacy, use "intense negotiations". If President Bush believed it was "diplomacy", which maintained genocidal sanctions against Iraq for twelve years that failed, rather than an effort to crush Iraq to submission, then why didn't he use "nine months of intense negotiations" to avoid a war of aggression against Iraq? He was President for nearly twenty seven months before the criminal assault on Iraq, he apparently intended all along. Iraq was no threat to anyone.
What President Bush means by "intense negotiations" includes a threat of military aggression with the example of Iraq to show this in no bluff. The Nuremberg Judgment held Goerings threat to destroy Prague unless Czechoslovakia surrendered Bohemia and Moravia to be an act of aggression.
If Qaddafi "correctly judged his country would be better off, and far more secure, without weapons of mass murder", why would the United States not be better off, and far more secure, if it eliminated all its vast stores of nuclear weapons? Is not the greatest danger from nuclear proliferation today without question President Bush's violations of the Non Proliferation (NPT), ABM and Nuclear Test Ban treaties by continuing programs for strategic nuclear weapons, failing to negotiate in good faith to achieve "nuclear disarmament" after more than thirty years and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons, small "tactical" weapons of mass murder, which he would use in a minute? Has he not threatened to use existing strategic nuclear weapons? The failure of the "nuclear weapon State Party(s)" to the NPT to work in good faith to achieve "nuclear disarmament these past 36 years is the reason the world is still confronted with the threat of nuclear war and proliferation.
None of the many and changing explanations, excuses, or evasions offered by President Bush to justify his war of aggression can erase the crimes he has committed. Among the less invidious misleading statements, President Bush made on January 20, 2004 was:
" Already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations."
Three days later, Dr. Kay told Reuters he thought Iraq had illicit weapons at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but that by a combination of U.N. inspections and Iraq's own decisions, "it got rid of them". He further said it "is correct" to say Iraq does not have any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in the country. He has added that no evidence of any chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq.
Iraq did not use illicit weapons in the 1991 Gulf war. The U.S. did - 900 tons plus of depleted uranium, fuel air explosives, super bombs,, cluster bombs with civilians and civilian facilities the "direct object of attack". The U.S. claimed to destroy 80% of Iraq's military armor. It dropped 88,500 tons of explosives, 7 1/2 Hiroshima's, on the country in 42 days. Iraq was essentially defenseless. Tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians perished. The U.S. reported 157 casualties, 1/3 from friendly fire, the remainder non combat.
U.N. inspectors over more than 6 years of highly intrusive physical inspections found and destroyed 90% of the materials required to manufacture nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. U.N. sanctions imposed August 6, 1990 had caused the deaths of 567,000 children under age five by October 1996, the U.N. FAO reported. Twenty four percent of the infants born live in Iraq in 2002 had a dangerously low birth weight below 2 kilos, symbolizing the condition of the whole population.
In March 2003 Iraq was incapable of carrying out a threat against the U.S., or any other country, and would have been pulverized by U.S. forces in place in the Gulf had it tried.
More than thirty five nations admit the possession of nuclear, chemical and/or biological weapons. Are these nations, caput lupinum, lawfully subject to destruction because of their mere possession of WMDs? The U.S. possesses more of each of these impermissible weapons than all other nations combined, and infinitely greater capacity for their delivery anywhere on earth within hours. Meanwhile the U.S. increases its military expenditures, which already exceed those of all other nations on earth combined, and its technology which is exponentially more dangerous.
The U.N. General Assembly Resolution on the Definition of Aggression of December 14, 1974 provides in part:
Article 1: Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State;
Article 2: The first use of armed force by a State in contravention of the Charter shall constitute prima facie evidence of an act of aggression;
Article 3: Any of the following acts ... qualify as an act of aggression:
(a) The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack;
(b) Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a State against the territory of another State;
(c) The blockade of the ports or coasts of a State by the armed forces of another State;
(d) An attack by the armed forces of a State on the land, sea or air forces, or marine and air fleets of another State.
If the U.S. assault on Iraq is not a War of Aggression under international law, then there is no longer such a crime as War of Aggression. A huge, all powerful nation has assaulted a small prostrate, defenseless people half way around the world with "Shock and Awe" terror and destruction, occupied it and continues daily assaults. President Bush praises U.S. soldiers' "...skill and their courage in armored charges, and midnight raids." which terrorize and kill innocent Iraqis, women, children, families, nearly every day and average 180 attacks each week.
The first crime defined in the Constitution annexed to the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg) under Crimes Against Peace is War of Aggression. II.6.a. The Nuremberg Judgment proclaimed:
“ The charges in the indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive war are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.”
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime...
The "seizure" of Austria in March 1938 and of Bohemia and Moravia from Czechoslovakia in March 1939 following the threat to destroy Prague were judged to be acts of aggression by the Tribunal even in the absence of actual war and after Britain, France, Italy and Germany had agreed at Munich to cede Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Germany.
The first conduct judged to be a war of aggression by Nazi Germany was its invasion of Poland in September 1939. There followed a long list, Britain, France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, Yugoslavia, Greece. The attack on the USSR, together with Finland, Romania and Hungary, was adjudged as follows:
It was contended for the defendants that the attack upon the U.S.S.R. was justified because the Soviet Union was contemplating an attack upon Germany, and making preparations to that end. It is impossible to believe that this view was ever honestly entertained.
The plans for the economic exploitation of the U.S.S.R., for the removal of masses of the population, for the murder of Commissars and political leaders, were all part of the carefully prepared scheme launched on 22 June without warning of any kind, and without the shadow of legal excuses. It was plain aggression.
The United Nations cannot permit U.S. power to justify its wars of aggression if it is to survive as a viable institution for ending the scourges of war, exploitation, hunger, sickness and poverty. Comparatively minor acts and wars of aggression by the United States in the last 20 years, deadly enough for their victims, in Grenada, Libya, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Yemen with many other nations threatened, sanctioned, or attacked, some with U.N. complicity and all without effective United Nations resistance, made the major deadly wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq possible.
Failure to condemn the massive U.S. war of aggression and illegal occupation of Iraq and any U.N. act providing colorable legitimacy to the U.S. occupation will open wide the gate to further, greater aggression. The line must be drawn now.
The United Nations must recognize and declare the U.S. attack and occupation of Iraq to be the war of aggression it is. It must refuse absolutely to justify, or condone the aggression, the illegal occupation and the continuing U.S. assaults in Iraq. The U.N. must insist that the U.S. withdraw from Iraq as it insisted Iraq withdraw from Kuwait in 1990.
There must be no impunity or profit for wars of aggression.
The U.S. and U.S. companies must surrender all profits and terminate all contracts involving Iraq.
There must be strict accountability by U.S. leaders and others for crimes they have committed against Iraq and compensation by the U.S. government for the damage its aggression has inflicted on Afghanistan and Iraq, the peoples injured there and stability and harm done to world peace.
This must be done with care to prevent the eruption of internal divisions, or violence and any foreign domination or exploitation in Iraq. The governance of a united Iraq must be returned to the diverse peoples who live there, acting together consensually in peace for their common good as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Ramsey Clark
The identical letter has been sent to:
Members of the UN Security Council
The President of the UN General Assembly
The Secretary General of the UN
The President of the United States
Bush Family Values: War, Wealth, Oil
Despite February polls showing President Bush losing his early reelection lead, he's still the favorite. No modern president running unopposed in his party's primaries and caucuses has ever lost in November.
But there may be a key to undoing that precedent. The two Bush presidencies are so closely linked, especially over Iraq, that the 43rd can't be understood apart from the 41st. Beyond that, for a full portrait of what the Bushes are about, we must return to the family's emergence on the national scene in the early 20th century.
This four-generation evolution of the Bushes involves multiple links that could become Bush's election-year Achilles' heel — if a clever and tough 2004 Democratic opponent can punch and slice at them. Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the clear Democratic front-runner, could be best positioned to do so. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he investigated the Iran-Contra and Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandals, both of which touched George H.W. Bush's Saudi, Iraqi and Middle Eastern arms-deal entanglements.
Washington lawyer Jack Blum, the ace investigator for Kerry's subcommittee back then, is said to be advising him now, which could be meaningful. Ironically, the Bush family's century of involvement in oil, armaments and global intrigue has never been at the center of the national debate since the Bushes starting running for president in 1980.
The reason? Insufficient public knowledge. The only Bush biography published before George H.W. Bush won election in 1988 was a puff job written by a former press secretary, and the biographies of George W. Bush in 2000 barely mentioned his forefathers. Millions of Republicans who have loyally voted for Bushes in three presidential elections simply have no idea. Here are circumstances and biases especially worth noting.
The Bushes and the military-industrial complex: George H. Walker and Samuel Prescott Bush were the dynasty's founding fathers during the years of and after World War I. Walker, a St. Louis financier, made his mark in corporate reorganizations and war contracts. By 1919, he was enlisted by railroad heir W. Averell Harriman to be president of Wall Street-based WA Harriman, which invested in oil, shipping, aviation and manganese, partly in Russia and Germany, during the 1920s. Sam Bush, the current president's other great-grandfather, ran an Ohio company, Buckeye Steel Castings, that produced armaments. In 1917, he went to Washington to head the small arms, ammunition and ordnance section of the federal War Industries Board. Both men were present at the emergence of what became the U.S. military-industrial complex.
Prescott Bush, the Connecticut senator and grandfather of the current president, had some German corporate ties at the outbreak of World War II, but the better yardstick of his connections was his directorships of companies involved in U.S. war production. Dresser Industries, for example, produced the incendiary bombs dropped on Tokyo and made gaseous diffusion pumps for the atomic bomb project. George H.W. Bush later worked for Dresser's oil-services businesses. Then, as CIA director, vice president and president, one of his priorities was the U.S. weapons trade and secret arms deals with Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the moujahedeen in Afghanistan.
In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about how "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." That complex's recent mega-leap to power came under George H.W. Bush and even more under George W. Bush — with the post-9/11 expansion of the military and creation of the Department of Homeland Security. But armaments and arms deals seem to have been in the Bushes' blood for nearly a century.
Oil: The Bushes' ties to John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil go back 100 years, when Rockefeller made Buckeye Steel Castings wildly successful by convincing railroads that carried their oil to buy heavy equipment from Buckeye. George H. Walker helped refurbish the Soviet oil industry in the 1920s, and Prescott Bush acquired experience in the international oil business as a 22-year director of Dresser Industries. George H.W. Bush, in turn, worked for Dresser and ran his own offshore oil-drilling business, Zapata Offshore. George W. Bush mostly raised money from investors for oil businesses that failed. Currently, the family's oil focus is principally in the Middle East.
Enron is another family connection. The company's Kenneth L. Lay made his first connections with George H.W. Bush in the early 1980s when the latter was working on energy deregulation. When Bush became president in 1989, he gave Lay two prominent international roles: membership on the President's Export Council and the task of planning for a G-7 summit in Houston. Lay parlayed that exposure into new business overseas and clout with Washington agencies. Family favoritism soon followed. When Bush senior lost the 1992 election, Lay picked up with son George W., first in Texas and then as a top contributor to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. Before Enron imploded in late 2001, it had more influence in a new administration than any other corporation in memory.
The intelligence community: Bushes and Walkers have been involved with the intelligence community since World War I. The importance of Sam Bush's wartime munitions-regulating role was obvious. During the 1920s, when George H. Walker was doing a lot of business in Russia and Germany, he became a director of the American International Corporation, formed during the war for purposes of overseas investment and intelligence-gathering. Prescott Bush's pre-1941 corporate and banking contacts with Germany, sensationalized on many Internet sites, appear to have been passed along to officials in government and intelligence circles.
George H.W. Bush may have had CIA connections before the agency's unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. A number of published sources suggest that Zapata Offshore was a CIA front long before he went on to become director of Central Intelligence in 1976. As for George W. Bush, his limited ties are said to have come through investments in, and buyouts of, several of his oil businesses by CIA- and BCCI-connected firms and individuals.
Top 1% economics: Over four generations, the Bush family has been involved with more than 20 securities firms, banks, brokerage houses and investment management firms, ranging from Wall Street giants like Brown Brothers Harriman and E.F. Hutton to small firms like J. Bush & Co. and Riggs Investment Management Corp. This relentless record of handling money for rich people has bred a vocational hauteur. In their eyes, the economic top 1% of Americans are the ones who count. Investors and their inheritors are favored — a good explanation of why George W. Bush has cut taxes on both dividends and estates, where most of the benefit goes to the top 1%. Over the course of George H.W. Bush's career, he was close to a number of the merger kings and leveraged-buyout specialists of the 1980s who came from Oklahoma and Texas: T. Boone Pickens, Henry Kravis and Hugh Liedtke. "Little guy" economics has almost no niche in the Bush economic worldview.
Debt and deficits: Whenever a Bush is president, private debt and government deficits seem to grow. Middle- and low-income Americans borrow to offset the income squeeze of recessions. The hallmark of Bush economics during both presidencies has been favoritism toward capital over workers. Federal budget deficits have soared because of a combination of upper-bracket tax favors, middle-income job shrinkage, big federal spending to hype election-year economic growth, huge defense outlays and overseas military spending for the wars in Iraq and elsewhere. Imperial hubris costs a lot of money.
Politically, over four generations the Bush past has been prologue. Despite George W. Bush's new good ol' boy image — cowboy boots and born-again ties to the religious right — his basic tendencies go in the same directions — oil, crony capitalism, top 1% economics and military-industrial-establishment loyalties — that the previous Bush and Walker generations have traveled. The old biases and loyalties seem ineradicable; so, too, for old grudges, like the two-generation fixation on Saddam Hussein.
The presidency is an old Bush ambition. As early as the 1940s, Barbara Bush talked to friends about becoming first lady. The current president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, told his wife before he retired in 1962 that he wished he'd been president. By 1963, George W. Bush, a student at Andover Academy, was talking about his own father's desire to be president.
In short, the word "dynasty" fits the Bushes all too well. They have had plenty of time to sort out their ambitions, loyalties and intentions. They know what they're in politics for — although this year may pose a new problem. The American people are also starting to find out.
Kevin Phillips' new book, just published, is "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush."
Bush Drilling Plan Brings Foes Together
LOS ANGELES TIMES
The governor of New Mexico — leading an unusual alliance of ranchers, environmentalists, hunters and property-rights activists — has launched an election-year challenge to the Bush administration's energy policies, vowing to block a plan to drill for gas on a vast expanse of desert grasslands here.
Gov. Bill Richardson's opposition represents the strongest signal to date that the Rocky Mountain West, long dependent on energy production, is having second thoughts about the administration's aggressive advocacy of oil and gas drilling.
"The federal government just got notice that, if they want to drill in Otero Mesa, this governor and this state are going to fight them," Richardson said at a rally in Albuquerque last week.
Richardson, who was secretary of Energy during the Clinton administration, remains a player on the national political stage. He has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential nominee, and will be chairman of this summer's Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Richardson's decision to champion the protection of Otero Mesa is a sign that the Bush energy policy could emerge as a campaign issue in the Mountain West as Democrats rail against Republican special interests.
The companies that stand to benefit most from drilling at Otero Mesa have close ties to members of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney and top officials of the Department of the Interior. That has led opponents to argue that cronyism, rather than sound energy policy, is behind the Otero Mesa drilling plan.
The contested area, encompassing 1.2 million acres in southern Otero County, west of Carlsbad and northeast of El Paso, is a vast plain, punctuated with rugged rock formations, that has long been a magnet for hunters and naturalists. It is home to herds of pronghorn, migratory songbirds and endangered Aplomado falcons.
"I think people see this as a remnant of the old New Mexico they love — a wildness and an openness," said Greta Miller, a member of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. "People here love it and want it stay like it is."
Ranchers own some of the land in the area, as does the state. But the federal government is by far the largest landowner; the Interior Department controls the area of greatest interest to oil and gas companies.
"This administration's approach to energy is to drill, drill, drill," Richardson said during a recent interview. "They pander to their core base: the energy and oil industry. We are an oil and gas state. But Otero Mesa deserves to be protected, and I intend to make that clear to the administration."
The governor described Otero Mesa's rare Chihuahuan Desert grasslands as "the West's ANWR" — a reference to Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the focus of heated disputes between oil interests and environmentalists.
Last week, Richardson signed an executive order making it state policy to protect Otero Mesa. The governor's authority over the area is limited. But he said he would seek to prevent new energy leases on state land, strengthen rules regarding the disposal of mine waste, and take steps to limit the issuing of crucial water permits to drillers.
New Mexico is the nation's second-largest producer of natural gas from onshore wells and the fifth-largest producer of oil. Taxes and royalties from the energy industry are by far the largest component of the state's $12-billion permanent fund, which is used primarily to finance education.
Richardson said that he supported energy exploration elsewhere in the state but that federal land managers needed to be more discriminating in where they allowed wells. The Bush administration has countered that the drilling is necessary to meet growing national demand.
"In the last decade, there have been a number of natural-gas-fired power plants that have been put into development," said Eric Ruff, an Interior Department spokesman. "If those plants are going to continue to operate, the gas has to come from somewhere. If it doesn't come from responsible development on America's public lands, it's going to come from foreign sources. And Americans will pay more for that."
Critics argue that the administration is unnecessarily targeting some of the last wild land in the West. Last year, the Interior Department angered conservationists by doing away with the process by which federal wilderness protection could be expanded to new areas, and by opening up many of those areas in Colorado, Montana and Utah to oil and gas drilling.
Moreover, concerns over the loss of wildlife habitat as well as contamination of forage and groundwater, have worried hunting and fishing groups and caused some ranchers, long accustomed to sharing grazing lands with oil wells, to lock their gates to energy company crews.
In 2002, Democrat Dave Freudenthal defeated an oil and gas businessman to become Wyoming's governor, largely by promising the state's ranchers that he would balance energy extraction with stronger environmental protection for imperiled grazing land. A Democrat campaigning for governor in Montana is promising to protect the Rocky Mountain Front from further drilling.
In New Mexico, Richardson intervened after Interior's Bureau of Land Management announced a plan to open up nearly 90% of the 650,000 acres of Otero Mesa under its control to unfettered energy development.
For Richardson, the Democratic governor of a swing state, the issue offers a chance to strengthen bipartisan appeal.
"It's not only an opportunity for an entree to some traditional Republican camps, it's also an opportunity to garner favor among more liberal camps who are skeptical of some of his economic policies," said Brian Sanderoff, president of Albuquerque-based Research & Polling Inc.
Many locals are so angry about the drilling plan that they have joined forces with traditional adversaries. For example, the campaign to save Otero Mesa includes bitter antagonists such as the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, a conservation organization, and members of the Paragon Foundation, a private-property-rights advocacy group made up of conservative businessmen and ranchers.
"I am a lifelong Republican. I was a fundraiser for President Bush, and I never thought I'd be saying what I am today," said Tweeti Blancett, a sixth-generation rancher from San Juan County in northwest New Mexico, where the landscape holds 35,000 wells. An additional 10,000 are planned.
"Our ranch has been devastated by drillers, our water is poisoned and so are our cows," Blancett said. "These oil companies are getting away with murder, ruining the land, and no one is stopping them."
Hundreds of miles from Blancett's ranch, Otero Mesa has caught the attention of numerous outsiders, including current or former Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich.
All have announced their opposition to drilling in Otero Mesa, and have singled out the energy industry as emblematic of the special interests who they say hold sway within the White House.
The largest leaseholders at Otero Mesa are Yates Petroleum Co. and Harvey E. Yates Co., owned by members of a family with deep roots in southeastern New Mexico and friends in high places.
George Yates, chief executive of Harvey E. Yates, is the former chairman of the Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative organization that frequently challenges environmental laws. The group's lead attorney during Yates' tenure was Gale Norton, now secretary of the Interior.
Yates was host at recent political fundraising events at which the vice president was a featured guest. Yates' company was embroiled in controversy in 1982 after a crew cut a fence and bulldozed a road through a federal wilderness area in southern New Mexico to reach a well site. One of the few public defenses of the company's actions came from Cheney, then a Wyoming congressman.
Until 2001, Yates Petroleum was represented by lobbyist J. Steven Griles, who that year became Norton's top deputy at the Department of the Interior.
When he was nominated to that post, Griles sold his client list to National Environmental Strategies. That firm is paying Griles $284,000 a year for four years as part of the buyout. Yates Petroleum is a current client of National Environmental Strategies.
In an interview with The Times, Yates, a former chairman of the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America, called allegations of political payback at Otero Mesa a "smear tactic" on the part of environmental groups.
"I am active politically," he said. "I give money to candidates who represent the philosophy that in my opinion is best for my state. I think everyone should do that.
"I'm a patriot," he said. "I have never attempted to use a donation in a political campaign to buy influence or position. That's not why I'm active. I'm sure if I gave a lot of money to the Democratic Party in New Mexico, this allegation would not be happening."
Estimates of the amount of natural gas beneath Otero Mesa vary. The Bureau of Land Management rates the field's potential as low to moderate.
"I think there's a huge question mark about whether there's ever going to be an economically viable resource that anyone will want to produce," said Linda Rundell, the bureau's state director. "It's really pretty small potatoes."
Nevertheless, the bureau's vision for Otero Mesa has shifted since the planning process began in 1998. An early draft placed twice as much land off limits to drilling as the final plan, which was released last month. More than 85% of the public comments on the plan supported protection of the area.
"It's not a vote," Rundell said. "We look at societal implications — we are required to do that — but it is not a vote."
Bush's Latest Trips Questioned
LOS ANGELES TIMES
With an appearance here today, President Bush has now paid visits to three states within days after a Democratic presidential primary election. Now, Democrats are accusing Bush of sticking taxpayers with the costs of what is essentially a political activity: responding to the attacks from Democratic candidates that arose during those primaries.
"Bush's visits, billed as `official events' are, in reality, taxpayer-financed campaigning,'' the Democratic National Committee said in a statement.
The Democratic primaries "are drawing a record number of voters, a fact that apparently has Bush and his campaign nervous enough to play second fiddle in state after state," said Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic Party group, in the same statement.
White House officials said Bush's stop in the Ozarks was unrelated to Missouri's Democratic primary, held six days ago. Rather, they said, the president was here to conduct "a conversation'' on the economy with small business owners and their employees.
"The president believes it's important to get outside Washington, D.C. and talk about the big challenges that we face and that we're working to meet,'' said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. "And he also believes it's important to get outside of Washington, D.C., and visit with people across the country. And it's a good opportunity for him to visit with people from around the country."
On Thursday, Bush traveled to Charleston, S.C., two days after a primary in that state. On Jan. 27, he went to Merrimack, N.H., also two days after a primary there.
Like South Carolina, Missouri held a primary Feb. 3.
"This is yet another sign of a worried White House," said Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst. "The Democratic nominating contest has done real damage to Bush in several key swing states, including Iowa and New Hampshire - both close in 2000. Of course these are political trips.''
Like Bush's hourlong interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press,'' Bush's visits to Missouri, New Hampshire and South Carolina, as well as to other key battleground states, reveal his determination to let no Democratic attacks go unanswered in this presidential election year.
On Thursday, Bush will travel to Pennsylvania, another vital swing state, one that he has visited as president more than two dozen times already. And this weekend, he plans to spend two days in Florida, which decided the hotly contested election in 2000.
But Bush's itinerary reflects "one of the advantages of incumbency, and every modern President has done exactly the same thing,'' Sabato said.
"Clinton did the same thing in 1996, and Dole complained bitterly,'' he added. "Bush did the same thing in 1992, and Clinton complained bitterly. Reagan did the same thing in 1984, and Mondale complained bitterly. I think there's a pattern here."
The White House has been contending recently with questions about Bush's claims - which he now has backed away from - that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The White House also admitted recently that the price tag for a Medicare reform and prescription drug benefit would be one-third costlier than Bush had promised during the hard-fought drive to win congressional enactment.
A cloud over Cheney
BOSTON GLOBE
THE JUSTICE Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, French prosecutors, and the Nigerian government are all investigating allegations that a Halliburton subsidiary paid millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian officials during the 1990s, when Vice President Dick Cheney was the Halliburton CEO. If such payments were made and Cheney approved them, he could be guilty of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. If the payments were made and he did not know about them, he could not have been a hands-on leader of his conglomerate. The nation, in any case, deserves answers before it votes in November if, as President Bush has indicated, he retains Cheney as his running mate.
The allegations grew out of a successful bid by an international consortium to build a $4 billion liquefied natural gas plant in oil- and gas-rich Nigeria. The leading member of the team, which is alleged to have paid $180 million in bribes, was a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root. Other members were companies from France, Italy, and Japan.
Late last month Halliburton said in a regulatory filing that the Justice Department and the SEC were looking into the allegations and had asked for information. Halliburton has hired outside lawyers to do an investigation.
Halliburton says it is cooperating with US officials on the case and "has no basis to assume that any of its employees, or employees of the joint venture, has violated the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."
Nigeria under the late dictator Sani Abacha was notorious for its level of corruption. Working in such an environment is always complicated for US firms, which are supposed to abide by the 1977 Corrupt Practices Act.
Because the Nigerian affair occurred under Cheney's watch at Halliburton, it has the potential to have a greater bearing on his political future than allegations of war profiteering by Halliburton or its subcontractors in Iraq after he left the CEO's chair.
Last week the Defense Department said Halliburton would reimburse it for $27.4 million in possible overcharges for food services in Iraq and Kuwait. In January the company itself said it would repay the government $6.2 million for potential overcharges by a Kuwaiti subcontractor. A third dispute involves $61 million in possibly excess charges for fuel imported to Iraq. The price-gouging on fuel was alleged in December. A month later, Halliburton was nonetheless awarded a $1.2 billion contract by the Army Corps of Engineers to restore the oil industry in southern Iraq.
Defense Department officials owe it to taxpayers to make sure Halliburton does not get one dollar more than it deserves. Justice Department and SEC officials owe it to voters to determine as quickly as possible what role if any Cheney had in any Nigerian bribes.
Re-Election Ballad
(Sung to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies theme song)
Come and listen to my story 'bout a boy named Bush.
His IQ was zero and his head was up his tush.
He drank like a fish while he's driving' all about,
But that didn't matter 'cuz his daddy bailed him out.
DUI, that is...criminal record...cover up.
Well, the first thing you know little Georgie goes to Yale.
He can't spell his name but they never let him fail.
He spends all his time hangin' out with student folk.
And that's when he learns how to snort a line of coke.
Blow, that is...white gold....nose candy.
The next thing you know there's a war in Vietnam.
Kin folks say, "Georgie boy, stay at home with Mom.
Let the common people get killed, maimed and scarred.
We'll buy you a nice spot in the Texas Air Guard."
Cushy, that is...country clubs....nose candy.
Twenty years later George gets a little bored.
He trades in the booze - says that Jesus is his Lord!
He said, "The White House is now the place I wanna be."
So he called his daddy's friends and they called the GOP.
Gun owners, that is....Falwell....Jesse Helms.
Come November 7, the election ran late.
Kin folks said, "Jeb, give the boy your state!"
"Don't let those colored folks get into the polls."
So they put up barricades so they couldn't punch their holes.
Chads, that is...Duval County....Miami-Dade.
Before the votes were counted five Supremes stepped in,
Told all the voters, "Hey, we want Georgie to win!"
"Stop counting votes!" was their solemn invocation.
And that's how Georgie finally got his coronation.
Rigged, that is...illegitimate...no moral authority.
There's an election in the fall and Georgie's lie pie has grown.
Kin folks fear, "There's no WMD and Georgie's cover's surely blown!"
Fearing defeat, the GOP needs to have a second coup.
So they'll up the terror threats and bring in the Diebold crew.
Touch-screen 'voting,' that is... optical scanners... no paper trails.
Y'all come vote, now. Ya hear?
Novak willfully disregard warnings that his column would endanger Valerie Plame
Two government officials have told the FBI that conservative columnist Robert Novak was asked specifically not to publish the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in his now-famous July 14 newspaper column. The two officials told investigators they warned Novak that by naming Plame he might potentially jeopardize her ability to engage in covert work, stymie ongoing intelligence operations, and jeopardize sensitive overseas sources.
These new accounts, provided by a current and former administration official close to the situation, directly contradict public statements made by Novak. He has downplayed his own knowledge about the potential harm to Plame and ongoing intelligence operations by making that disclosure. He has also claimed in various public statements that intelligence officials falsely led him to believe that Plame was only an analyst, and the only potential consequences of her exposure as a CIA officer would be that she might be inconvenienced in her foreign travels.
The two administration officials questioned by the FBI characterized Novak's statements as untrue and misleading, according to a government official and an attorney official familiar with the FBI interviews.
One of the sources also asserted that the credibility of the administration officials who spoke to the FBI is enhanced by the fact that the officials made their statement to the federal law enforcement authorities. If the officials were found to be lying to the FBI, they could be potentially prosecuted for making false statements to federal investigators the sources pointed out.
Novak declined to be interviewed for this article.
The two officials say Novak was told, as one source put it, that Plame's work for the CIA "went much further than her being an analyst," and that publishing her name would be "hurtful" and could stymie ongoing intelligence operations and jeopardize her overseas sources.
"When [Novak] says that he was not told that he was 'endangering' someone, that statement might be technically true," this source says. "Nobody directly told him that she was going to be physically hurt. But that was implicit in that he was told what she did for a living."
"At best, he is parsing words," said the other official. "At worst, he is lying to his readers and the public. Journalists should not lie, I would think." These new accounts, provided by two sources familiar to the investigation, contradict Novak's attempts to downplay his own knowledge about the potential harm to Plame.
Moreover, one of the government officials who has told federal investigators that Novak's account is false has also turned over to investigators contemporaneous notes he made of at least one conversation with Novak. Those notes, according to sources, appear to corroborate the official's version of events.
That the FBI interviewed the officials who warned Novak not to publish Plame's name could not be independently corroborated through federal law-enforcement authorities. That's not surprising — the investigation has been shrouded in secrecy.
Over the past several months, the FBI has interviewed more than 30 Bush administration officials and has reviewed phone logs, personal calendars, and e-mail records, according to government sources. But Attorney General John Ashcroft tightly controlled information gathered during the probe, requiring FBI agents to sign unprecedented nondisclosure agreements that say they could face immediate termination if they speak to the press. As a result, scant information about the leak investigation has appeared in the media, making it all but disappear as a political issue for the Bush administration until the disclosure last week that a federal grand jury had been convened to hear evidence in the matter.
On December 30, Ashcroft recused himself from the case so a special counsel, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, could take over. And on January 21, a federal grand jury in Washington began hearing evidence, re-interviewing witnesses, and notifying others that they will be called. At least four Bush administration officials have testified so far before the grand jury.
Deputy Attorney General James Comey said the secrecy surrounding the investigation would continue -- partly because "we don't want to smear somebody who might be innocent and might not be charged."
Shortly after his column appeared, Novak seemed to suggest that the information about Plame was planted as part of a White House campaign. In an interview with Newsday reporters Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce, he said, "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant. They gave me the name and I used it."
Then Novak started to backtrack, giving the impression that the leak was more the result of his own initiative than from a White House source. He also claimed the Newsday reporters quoted him out of context, an accusation both reporters deny. (Full disclosure: Royce is my longtime friend.)
Novak made another statement about his column during a September 29 broadcast of CNN's Crossfire. "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this," he said. "In July, I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador [Joseph] Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing.
"When I called the CIA in July, they confirmed Mrs. Wilson's involvement in a mission for her husband on a secondary basis ... they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else.
"According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about, pure Bush-bashing?"
In his July 14 column, Novak claimed that Plame had played a role in the selection of her husband for a mission to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was buying enriched uranium. Yet White House and CIA officials have since said that Wilson, a former national-security senior director for African affairs, was chosen only because of his expertise, and that his wife had no role in his selection.
A government official also questions Novak's claims that the columnist "called the CIA" and "they confirmed Mrs. Wilson's involvement in her husband's mission." Rather, this person says, the CIA at first declined to comment. Still later, the same official contends that Novak was categorically told that Plame had played no role in the selection of her husband for the Niger mission.
"He was told it just wasn't true -- period," said the government official. "But he just went with the story anyway. He just didn't seemed to care very much whether the information was true or not."
Apparently the leak to Novak was made as senior Bush administration officials were reportedly attempting to discredit Wilson, who had been saying that the administration had relied on faulty intelligence information to bolster its case to go to war with Iraq.(President Bush had cited the Niger evidence in his 2003 State of the Union address.)
Congressional Democrats and some members of the Bush administration say the purpose of the leak was not only to discredit Wilson but also to intimidate other government officials from coming forward to question the administration's rationale for war.
Steve Huntley, the editorial-page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, which is the flagship newspaper for Novak's syndicated column, says he "implicitly and completely trusts Bob Novak's reporting."
Fred Hiatt, the editorial-page editor of The Washington Post, which also ran Novak's column, declined to comment. Previously, though, he told his newspaper's ombudsman, Michael Getler, "In retrospect, I wish I had asked more questions, and I wish Bob had informed us and his readers that he had considered, and rejected, a CIA request to withhold her name."
(After Novak's column appeared, an anonymous administration official said the CIA warned Novak of "security concerns" that would arise if he were to publish Plame's name. Novak has disputed that account as well.)
In an online column, "Take Three Steps to Avoid Future Novaks," Aly Colón of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit, educational organization for journalists, writes, "There's an old adage that claims journalists are only as good as the sources that feed them. Here's a new one: Journalists are only as credible as the ethics that guide them. By disclosing the identity of a CIA operative, Novak provoked a Justice Department investigation of his sources and raised serious questions about his ethical conduct."
What if Novak indeed purposely mislead readers of his column-- as the two administration officials have asserted to the FBI?
In an interview, Colón, while saying he could not speak to the specifics of this particular story said: "Any time a journalist purposely deceives his readers, he undermines the newsperson's or [his or her own] news organization's credibility" and "threatens the trust between the reader and reporter."
CBS Pulls Advertisement on Medicare Prepared by Administration
NEW YORK TIMES
CBS said on Friday that it had stopped running a television advertisement for the new Medicare prescription drug law while Congress investigates its accuracy.
The 30-second advertisement, prepared by the Bush administration, assures Medicare beneficiaries that the program is not changing in any way except to provide "more benefits." Democratic members of Congress and some liberal advocacy groups say the advertisement amounts to a taxpayer-subsidized political commercial for the administration.
Dana McClintock, a spokesman for CBS in New York, said: "The ad has been pulled. It violated our longstanding policy on advocacy advertising. We pulled it as soon as we became aware of the investigation."
The government is spending $9.5 million to run the advertisement on national network and cable programs in the next six weeks.
The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, is examining the advertisements at the request of several Democrats. The lawmakers say the commercials are inaccurate and constitute an illegal use of federal money to promote the re-election of President Bush.
The CBS policy says the network "does not sell time for the advocacy of viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance." A commercial is considered unacceptable if it explicitly takes a position on such an issue, or if it presents arguments parallel to those made by one side, "so as to constitute implicit advocacy."
CBS's decision angered Republicans in Washington.
"This is a political decision," said John P. Feehery, a spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois.
Mr. McClintock said the decision had been made by Martin D. Franks, an executive vice president of CBS.
Mr. Feehery asserted that Mr. Franks was "a partisan Democrat" who had contributed money to Democratic candidates. CBS executives rejected the criticism as a smear tactic, and they insisted that their policy had been applied in an evenhanded way.
"People on both sides express displeasure when you have a clear and consistent policy down the middle," Mr. McClintock said.
Last month CBS rejected a request from a liberal group, MoveOn.org, that wanted to run a Super Bowl advertisement criticizing President Bush's fiscal policies.
Kevin W. Keane, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, denounced the decision on the Medicare advertisement.
"It's unfortunate that CBS has chosen to undermine our efforts to educate seniors about the law," Mr. Keane said.
But Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said: "The Medicare ad is a propaganda effort with taxpayer dollars. CBS has done the responsible thing. Other networks must now follow suit."
President Bush and Republicans in Congress have taken credit for delivering drug benefits to the elderly. But since the legislation was signed on Dec. 8, Democrats have kept up their criticism, describing the law as a giveaway to pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee and the majority leader, called on CBS to reconsider its decision. Dr. Frist said the advertisement was "clearly nonpartisan," and he noted that under the law, federal officials must "broadly disseminate information" about the new drug benefit.
Guardsman says he saw Bush's Guard records in trash
CNN
A former officer in the Texas National Guard said Thursday he once overheard a conversation in which there was a request to sanitize President Bush's Guard records during Bush's tenure as Texas governor.
Soon afterward, he said, he saw Bush's Guard performance review in a trash can. Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War era.
Retired Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, who was then an adviser to the Texas adjutant general, who in that capacity serves as the commander of the state's National Guard, made the allegations.
He said that in 1997 he overheard Joe Allbaugh -- who was Bush's chief of staff at the time -- ask Guard commander Maj. Gen. Daniel James to gather Bush's files and "make sure there wasn't anything there that would embarrass the governor."
Allbaugh reacted angrily to Burkett's charges, calling them "hogwash" and "absolute garbage." Allbaugh, who went on to direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the Bush administration, said he doesn't even know who the "goober" is, referring to Burkett.
James denied any reports were altered, according to The New York Times.
Burkett said that the day after he overhead Allbaugh's request, he heard James convey a directive to the state services officer to gather Bush's files and go through them. Then, about 10 days later, he said, he came across "files on a table."
"But I also saw at the edge of that table a roughly 15-gallon, old metal waste can. At the top of that were several pages, 20 to 40 pages approximately," Burkett said on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now."
"I glanced down at the top of those documents. In ink was the word 'Bush, George W., 1 Lt.' This was a performance report. I was right at the trash can. I filtered through the top five or six pages in that, and they were all copies and originals of old performance documents and pay records for 'Bush, George W., 1 Lt."
Burkett said he was disheartened after the incident. "All of those efforts, I felt, had been -- had undermined our cause," said Burkett, who had worked to make the Texas National Guard more efficient.
"I'm not going to get in the mud. You know, this has become a political football," he told CNN. "I'm here to tell you the same facts that I said, and I reported, and I have worked through the state legislative system in the state of Texas," Burkett said.
"This is no new allegation, this is no new case, and this is no new fact. The fact is the same today as it was in 1997. And God is my pilot, and God is in my foxhole."
Burkett's claims about Bush's records were also made in a 1998 letter to a Democratic congressman, according to the Times. In the letter, Burkett complained that his battle over medical care with the Guard led to his being hospitalized for depression.
White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who as an aide to then-Gov. Bush handled the records in 1990s, on Wednesday called Burkett's allegations an "outrageously false statement," according to the Times.
White House officials referred to Burkett as an unhappy former guardsman who had a falling out with his superiors, the paper said.
Burkett is quoted in an upcoming book, "Bush's War for Re-election," by James Moore. Moore said Burkett's "reputation is impeccable."
"And we know that the president's record in terms of his grounding as a pilot is missing. The final points totals are missing. Any medical records are missing. And a retirement statement, in terms of the points he earned, is missing," Moore said.
Questions about Bush's Guard service have intensified in recent weeks after Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said Bush was AWOL, or absent without leave, from his Air National Guard service during a period from May 1972 to May 1973 when he was transferred from Texas to Alabama so he could work on a Senate political campaign.
The White House has fought back, releasing records it says prove Bush fulfilled his requirements and was honorably discharged. Most recently, the White House released a document showing that Bush got a dental exam at the Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Alabama on January 6, 1973. (Full story)
"This again shows he was there, he served in Alabama. He was honorably discharged," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
Burkett's allegations were on some Internet web sites just before the 2000 presidential election but were largely unreported by conventional media, according to USA Today.
But questions have lingered since that year's presidential campaign, after the Boston Globe uncovered a May 1973 evaluation by Bush's commander stating that the first lieutenant had not been seen during the previous year.
Dispute Prompts Scrutiny of Bush's Daily Reading
NEW YORK TIMES
The highly classified digest that provides President Bush with his daily intelligence updates is being scrutinized within the government and Congress after criticism that the information Mr. Bush has been given on Iraq and other matters has not reflected a broad range of views, senior administration and Congressional officials say.
Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee, which voted on Thursday night to expand its inquiry on Iraq intelligence, have signaled their intent to examine the shaping and presentation of the daily briefing, the officials said Friday.
The inquiries were prompted in part by questions about whether prewar White House statements regarding Iraq and its illicit weapons were based on the best available intelligence on that subject, the officials said.
As much as any information the president receives from top aides, the daily briefing informs his view of the world, ranging across issues of terrorism, arms control, military events and more.
But under Mr. Bush, the number of intelligence agencies receiving the data was reduced, prompting complaints from senior officials in those agencies.
They say that because they do not know what is presented in the digest, prepared by the C.I.A.'s intelligence directorate, they have no way of challenging information with which they disagree, administration officials said.
Under previous administrations, the heads of agencies like the State Department's intelligence branch and the Defense Intelligence Agency were among those who received daily copies of the briefing document.
In the prewar debate on Iraq, other agencies, particularly the State Department's intelligence branch, were more skeptical of the idea that Iraq possessed illicit weapons than the C.I.A. was, the officials said.
The C.I.A. review was announced in an unpublicized address at the agency this week by Jami Miscik, the deputy director for intelligence, who said it would focus on the "quality and approach taken" in the preparation of the digest, formally known as the President's Daily Brief, or P.D.B.
The separate review by the Senate committee will consider whether the digests presented the White House with an accurate picture of prewar intelligence on Iraq, and whether they adequately reflected the views of intelligence agencies outside the C.I.A., senior congressional officials said.
In a telephone interview on Friday, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate panel, declined to say whether the panel was seeking to read the highly classified documents. But a senior Congressional official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said "the P.D.B's have become a focus of greater interest on our part."
A senior intelligence official said that the briefings often spelled out the views of agencies other than the C.I.A. "if we know of competing views" and that the reasons for the disagreements were explained.
A senior intelligence official also said representatives of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and others also took part in a daily planning meeting at C.I.A. headquarters in which the contents of the presidential daily briefing document were mapped out in general terms.
In her speech, Ms. Miscik said the C.I.A. review would compare the approach adopted under President Bush with the one in place until 2000 under President Bill Clinton. An overhaul three years ago "significantly improved the quality of the product we put in front of the president each morning," Ms. Miscik said, but the review would "see if some of the strong points of our earlier approach have been lost."
Ms. Miscik did not publicly describe the nature of the earlier changes. But a senior intelligence official said that under Mr. Bush, the intelligence digest included more operational, real-time information than before, including detail about the sources of intelligence that could not have been shared with a larger audience.
Intelligence officials said the C.I.A. review would not address the question of how widely the briefing should be distributed, a decision they said was up to the White House. But Congressional officials said that the Senate intelligence panel would be likely to address that issue.
A White House spokesman, Sean McCormack, said: "The P.D.B. is a product prepared for the president, and each president decides the distribution of the P.D.B. President Bush decided at the start of his term that only his closest and most senior advisers should receive copies."
On Thursday night, that Senate panel voted unanimously to expand the scope of its inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, to address not only whether the intelligence was well founded but whether public statements and testimony on Iraq by government officials "were substantiated by intelligence information."
The contents of the president's daily brief are so closely held that most Congressional and administration officials who have raised questions about the briefings given to Mr. Bush acknowledge that they have never been permitted to see the document. They say they do not know if the briefings on Iraq and other subjects reflected the general consensus of the intelligence community.
The White House asserts that the documents are covered by executive privilege. Even members of the Congressional commission that is investigating the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States have been permitted only limited access to the documents, under highly restricted circumstances.
The staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee still has not yet been able to strike an agreement with the White House that would allow it to review copies of the briefings on Iraq in the months before the war, as part of its broadened effort to compare the administration's public statements with prewar intelligence.
A joint statement issued by Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Mr. Rockefeller said that other new areas the panel would review would include the role played by the Iraqi National Congress in providing information to intelligence agencies.
Some of the defectors introduced to American intelligence officers by the exile organization, which is headed by Ahmad Chalabi, were determined to have fabricated some of the information they shared about Iraq and its illicit weapons, according to intelligence officials.
Republicans had sought for months to block any widening of the Senate inquiry. In his own statement, Senator Rockefeller said that "a few outstanding issues" continued to divide Republicans and Democrats on the panel, but he said the two sides had "made a lot of progress."
"We will address the question of whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused by reviewing statements by senior policy makers to determine if those statements were substantiated by the intelligence," Senator Rockefeller said.
PRESIDENT RELEASES NEWLY RECOVERED WARZONE DOCUMENTS OFFERING INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF OF IRAQI ACQUISITION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
PRESIDENT RELEASES NEWLY RECOVERED WARZONE DOCUMENTS OFFERING INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF OF IRAQI ACQUISITION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Statement by the President
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today, I'm taking just a few minutes off from scarfing down pork rinds at my daddy's 79th birthday party to bring glorious news to the American people. After months and months of fruitlessly scouring the charred carcass of Iraq for some shred of evidence to justify my killing more innocent civilians than died on 9/11, I'm pleased to say that documents newly recovered from Saddam bin Hussein's safe prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this nefarious evildoer was actively scheming with rogue regimes to acquire vast quantities of WMDs. And while I have not had an opportunity to examine the papers myself, I have the utmost faith in the competence of those persons in the Central Intelligence Agency to whom I delegated the task of covering my ass. Therefore, I have ordered these documents to be released immediately. I trust that they will appease the crybaby liberal news media, and effectively debunk any absurd speculation about my Administration and the DoD's Constitutionally suspect Intelligence Office having bullied Georgie Peorgie Tenet and his chubby office jockeys into falsifying reports of Iraqi WMDs just so I could settle a family score. Thank you.
EXHIBIT A
EXHIBIT B
Rumsfeld Says Iraq Killings Reflect Human Nature
REUTERS
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked about Tuesday's car bombing in Iraq that killed about 50 people, said there are murders in every major city in the world "because human beings are human beings."
During a Pentagon briefing, Rumsfeld also said he could not remember the widely publicized assertion made by U.S. ally Britain in the months before the Iraq war that President Saddam Hussein's forces could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of being ordered to do so.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same briefing that he was optimistic about security despite Tuesday's blast that ripped through a police station as civilians lined up to apply for jobs in Iskandariya, 25 miles south of Baghdad.
"We continue to be optimistic about the situation on the ground in Iraq." There has been "a lot of success," Myers said, in bringing stability and security to Iraq ahead of the June 30 target date for returning self-governance to Iraq.
Rumsfeld said it was impossible to prevent all attacks.
"I point out that an attacker has all the advantage," Rumsfeld said.
"It's impossible to defend in every location against every conceivable kind of attack at every time of the day or night. It is not possible," he added.
Rumsfeld noted that "somewhere between 150,000 and 210,000" Iraqis are working in security forces, with many "recently trained and new to these assignments. They're getting better at it all the time."
"That does not mean that there will not be people that are killed. I mean, look at any city on the face of the Earth. Everyone's against homicide. And yet in every ... major city on the face of the Earth, homicides occur every week. Hundreds occur every year in every city."
"Now, why if we have all those policemen, why if we have everyone against homicides, do they still occur? The answer is because human beings are human beings," Rumsfeld added.
BRITISH DOSSIER
Prime Minister Tony Blair's government said in a September 2002 "White Paper" that Saddam's chemical and biological weapons "are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them." The dossier became the source of major controversy in Britain, with critics arguing that Blair's government exaggerated Iraq's capabilities.
No chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq nearly 11 months after the invasion that toppled Saddam. Such weapons were the main reason cited for the war, in which more than 500 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis have died.
Asked by a reporter whether he personally had believed the British contention, Rumsfeld said, "I don't know that I want to get into that kind of a subject. First of all, who are you quoting on that?"
A reporter responded that it was "Tony Blair's White Paper."
Rumsfeld then was asked whether he had an opinion on the 45-minute claim when it was first made in 2002.
"I don't remember the statement being made, to be perfectly honest," Rumsfeld replied.
On another subject, Myers said the United States had not yet deemed as authentic a letter that U.S. military officials in Iraq described as written by an associate of Osama bin Laden and aimed at provoking an Iraqi civil war. Myers said that "authenticity is still being evaluated."
"I haven't read it. I don't know if it's authentic. People who've read it think it is," Rumsfeld added.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad Monday that "we are persuaded" that the letter was authentic.
Feds Win Right to War Protesters' Records
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists.
In addition to the subpoena of Drake University, subpoenas were served this past week on four of the activists who attended a Nov. 15 forum at the school, ordering them to appear before a grand jury Tuesday, the protesters said.
Federal prosecutors refuse to comment on the subpoenas.
In addition to records about who attended the forum, the subpoena orders the university to divulge all records relating to the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a New York-based legal activist organization that sponsored the forum.
The group, once targeted for alleged ties to communism in the 1950s, announced Friday it will ask a federal court to quash the subpoena on Monday.
"The law is clear that the use of the grand jury to investigate protected political activities or to intimidate protesters exceeds its authority," guild President Michael Ayers said in a statement.
Representatives of the Lawyer's Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union said they had not heard of such a subpoena being served on any U.S. university in decades.
Those served subpoenas include the leader of the Catholic Peace Ministry, the former coordinator of the Iowa Peace Network, a member of the Catholic Worker House, and an anti-war activist who visited Iraq in 2002.
They say the subpoenas are intended to stifle dissent.
"This is exactly what people feared would happen," said Brian Terrell of the peace ministry, one of those subpoenaed. "The civil liberties of everyone in this country are in danger. How we handle that here in Iowa is very important on how things are going to happen in this country from now on."
The forum, titled "Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard Home!" came the day before 12 protesters were arrested at an anti-war rally at Iowa National Guard headquarters in Johnston. Organizers say the forum included nonviolence training for people planning to demonstrate.
The targets of the subpoenas believe investigators are trying to link them to an incident that occurred during the rally. A Grinnell College librarian was charged with misdemeanor assault on a peace officer; she has pleaded innocent, saying she simply went limp and resisted arrest.
"The best approach is not to speculate and see what we learn on Tuesday" when the four testify, said Ben Stone, executive director of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, which is representing one of the protesters.
Mark Smith, a lobbyist for the Washington-based American Association of University Professors, said he had not heard of any similar case of a U.S. university being subpoenaed for such records.
He said the case brings back fears of the "red squads" of the 1950s and campus clampdowns on Vietnam War protesters.
According to a copy obtained by The Associated Press, the Drake subpoena asks for records of the request for a meeting room, "all documents indicating the purpose and intended participants in the meeting, and all documents or recordings which would identify persons that actually attended the meeting."
It also asks for campus security records "reflecting any observations made of the Nov. 15, 2003, meeting, including any records of persons in charge or control of the meeting, and any records of attendees of the meeting."
Several officials of Drake, a private university with about 5,000 students, refused to comment Friday, including school spokeswoman Andrea McDonough. She referred questions to a lawyer representing the school, Steve Serck, who also would not comment.
A source with knowledge of the investigation said a judge had issued a gag order forbidding school officials from discussing the subpoena.
Oppose EPA's New Mercury Proposal: Benefits Industry, Endangers Children
The Bush Administration recently released a dramatically weakened plan for regulating toxic mercury from coal-burning power plants bowing to intense pressure from utility companies.
Exposure to mercury by pregnant women and women of childbearing age can cause permanent brain damage to fetuses, infants and young children. Consequently, the Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, which includes pediatricians, businesspeople and scientists, opposes the plan because it does not sufficiently protect our nation's children!
The EPA already estimated that under the Clean Air Act, available technologies could reduce 90 percent of mercury from power plants easily and cheaply. Instead, the Administration proposed allowing power plants to emit six to seven times more mercury pollution into the air.
SIGN NOW to oppose this TOXIC proposal! Your comments will be submitted to the 60-day public comment period to the EPA!
New Budget for 2005: Bad News for the Environment
From forest protection & Everglades restoration to oceans & wildlife protection, the 2005 budget President Bush recently proposed to Congress puts protection of the nation's air, land, water and wildlife at risk, say environmental leaders.
The latest Bush plan proposes big increases in defense spending and more tax cuts, supported in large part by huge cuts in programs that Americans want and expect like education, healthcare, job training and employment, housing programmes and environmental protection. The ENVIRONMENT will be hit the hardest:
- funding for the U.S. EPA as a whole is cut 7.1%
- funding for the U.S. Forest Service is cut 7.6%
- funding for endangered-species recovery efforts is
reduced by $9.8 million
- funding for water quality programs is cut 30%.
Not only that, but Bush's budget relies on revenues from oil-lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- sales that Congress and the American public has consistently opposed.
"This budget not only shortchanges our environment, it challenges our nation's role as a global environmental leader," said Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.).
Act now: sign this petition to Congressional Budget committees urging them to oppose this budget!
RESUME
GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20520
=========================
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
=========================
Law Enforcement:
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.
Military:
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.
College:
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.
=====================
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:
=====================
- I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in Midland,Texas, in 1975.
- I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil inTexas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
- I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money.
- With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.
=======================================
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS
=======================================
- I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union.
- During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.
- I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.
- I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.
- With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.
=============================
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:
=============================
- I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.
- I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.
- I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
- I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.
- I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.
- I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
- I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S stock market.
- In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.
- I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history.
- My "poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
- I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.
- I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.
- My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S History, Enron.
- My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.
- I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution.
- More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.
- I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.
- I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
- I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
- I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in U.S. history.
- I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.
- I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.
- I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
- I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
- I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.
- I set the all-time presidential record for most days on vacation in any one-year period.
- After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
- I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.
- I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.
- I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. citizens, and the world community.
- In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.
- I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.
- I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden [sic] to justice.
=======================
RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
=======================
- All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.
- All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
- All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.
Things you must believe to remain a Republican today
Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're
conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for
your recovery.
The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest
national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.
Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but
crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.
"Standing Tall for America" means firing your workers and moving their
jobs to India.
A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but
multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without
regulation.
Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary
Clinton.
The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in
speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for
Governor of California as a Republican.
If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.
A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then
demand their cooperation and money.
HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.
Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health
care to all Americans is socialism.
Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but
creationism should be taught in schools.
Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy
made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy
when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.
A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense.
A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is
solid defense policy.
Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution,
which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George
Bush's driving record is none of our business.
You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft
can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.
What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but
what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.
Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with
China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
Activists Deluge White House & Congress with Letters Against Medicare Ads
"Last week the Alliance for Retired Americans asked its activists to express their outrage over use of taxpayers' money to fund a Medicare media propaganda ad campaign and the response was overwhelming," says Edward F. Coyle, Executive Director. "Such an impressive reaction by Alliance activists makes it clear that older Americans are united in their determination to stop the White House and its Congressional allies from distorting the facts about this hopelessly flawed bill. When seniors stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. On Election Day 2004 we will use our power to take back our government from those who want to privatize Social Security and Medicare and jeopardize the future of our children and grandchildren."
Following the bombardment of letters from Alliance activists and their allies as well as Democrats' demands for an investigation, the General Accounting Office announced that it will launch an investigation into charges that the Bush Administration is using taxpayer money for "political purposes."
The criticism of the ads has prompted the House Republican Conference to announce its own plan to launch a "media counteroffensive" in the form of public service announcements to promote the new law. The decision follows new polls showing that 33 percent of the public now views the Medicare bill negatively.
Companies Line Up to Offer Drug Discount Card
More than 100 companies have applied for approval to sponsor a new government-approved drug discount card. Among those seeking to offer cards are several big pharmacy benefit management companies -- AdvancePCS, Caremark RX, Express Scripts and Medco Health Solutions; health insurers -- Aetna, UnitedHealthcare and Wellpoint Health Networks; pharmacy trade groups -- National Association of Chain Drug Stores and National Community Pharmacists Association; and one major senior organization -- AARP. The cards will be available to 10 million Medicare beneficiaries who do not have drug coverage, and will remain in force until the new prescription drug benefit goes into effect in 2006. Medicare enrollees will be permitted to purchase only one Medicare-approved card. The annual cost of the card is $30, but this fee will be waived for an estimated 4.5 million low-income-Medicare enrollees who will be eligible for a $600 credit to use for discounted drugs. Enrollment will start in May and pharmacies will begin accepting the cards in June. Companies offering discount cards will be required to offer 209 classes of drugs. "The Alliance for Retired Americans is deeply concerned that the wide array of choices being offered will only serve to confuse older Americans," says Ruben Burks, Secretary-Treasurer. "We also doubt that the cards will produce discounts anywhere near the 25 percent predicted by the Bush Administration. In addition, several key questions -- such as how the cards mesh with existing drug subsidy programs -- remain unresolved."
More Fallout Over Increased Cost of Drug Bill
Several Republican Senators have joined Democrats in expressing outrage that the new cost estimate for the Medicare prescription drug bill is $534 billion over the next 10 years -- $139 billion more than the original estimate by the Congressional Budget Office. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is seeking to insert language in a budget reconciliation bill that would require the Senate Finance Committee to keep spending under $400 billion over 10 years. He is reported to have the support of Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, as well as Sens. Wayne Allard (R-CO) and John Kyl (R-AZ). Sen. Sessions' action follows a call, last week, by several key Democratic Senators for hearings on the issue.
Another Key Medicare Staffer Defects
John Kelliher, chief counsel of the House Ways and Means Committee, is the latest key player in the Medicare battle to exit his job for the private sector. Kelliher will join Timmons & Co., a lobbying firm, on March 1. Kelliher was responsible for managing the Committee's legislative activity on issues such as Medicare and Social Security. Kelliher is the sixth person involved in pushing the flawed Medicare prescription drug bill through Congress who has either jumped ship or announced plans to do so before the plan goes into effect. "The Alliance for Retired Americans finds it highly suspicious that so many of the people who spearheaded this project are reluctant to stay around to see their widely heralded 'landmark' legislation take effect," says Alliance President George J. Kourpias, President of the Alliance. "In our view, there are two reasons for those responsible to get out now -- to avoid the wrath of older Americans once the bill is implemented and to share in the billions of dollars in giveaways provided to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries."
News Flash
At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.
At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement.
He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.
"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like "x" and "y" and refer to themselves as "unknowns", but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.
"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle," Ashcroft declared.
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes. I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence," the President said, adding: "Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line."
President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex."
Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is certain of:
Though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks."
MoveOn.org Ad
President Bush is on the run. Before the war in Iraq, he told us that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and had a strong nuclear program that posed a threat to the world. Now that it's clear that was hype, the President is evading responsibility for misleading the nation.
Today MoveOn is launching a new ad that powerfully demonstrates President Bush's WMD deception. They'll need to finish their $10 million fundraising campaign to get it on the air. Check out the "Polygraph" ad and help run it right.
Bush Deficit Disaster Puts Your Family at Risk
This week, we learned that President Bush plans to leave millions of children and families behind in his budget for the fiscal year 2005. The LA Times reported that of the 65 federal programs President Bush is eliminating in his budget, more than half of them are education programs:
The projects Bush would eliminate include a $246-million effort to improve early childhood education in low-income neighborhoods and a $174-million program to foster learning in large high schools. Also targeted are programs that help gifted and talented students, promote arts in education and attempt to stop students from dropping out.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. He's also making massive cuts to the Community-Oriented Police Services program, taking money out of local communities that pays for the first responders who protect us.
And the same day that a letter laced with a toxin was found in Senate offices, Bush told Congress he wanted to eliminate an $8.2 million program that would help protect our nation's communities from these kinds of attacks.
President Bush is abandoning our children and abandoning the security of our nation.
A Deficit Disaster
President Bush's devastating cuts that hurt our children and make us less secure do nothing to alleviate the enormous deficits he's created that leave America with crippling new debts that will last for generations. Bush took the record surpluses created by President Clinton and turned them into record deficits.
BUSH ENDORSES U.S. JOBS MOVING OVERSEAS
On Labor Day, President Bush said, "I want people to understand that when somebody wants to work and can't find a job, it says we've got a problem in America that we're going to deal with. We want everybody in this country working." But yesterday, President Bush directly contradicted himself, releasing a report which "supports the shift of U.S. jobs overseas." When asked about the report and how it contradicts the president's supposed concern about job losses, the president's top economic adviser said, "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade."
With more than two million jobs lost since President Bush took office, newspaper headlines across the country told readers of the White House's new support for the practice of wealthy corporations eliminating U.S. jobs and shipping them to lower-wage countries. The Seattle Times headline read, "Bush report: Sending jobs overseas helps U.S." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said, "Bush Economic Report Praises 'Outsourcing' Jobs" and the Arizona Republic said, "Bush Report Lauds 'Outsourcing' Jobs."
And while this may be troubling to the millions in the United States who are out of work and suffering from stagnating wages, it was celebrated in India, where thousands of good paying, white-collar U.S. jobs have moved. The headlines in India read, "Bush Aides: Outsourcing win-win for India." The story said the Administration believes exporting jobs to India and other lower-wage countries "is a win-win for both exporter and importer" - failing to explain how this is a win for American workers who the president just months ago purported to care about.
BUSH AIDES ACCUSED OF DESTROYING MILITARY DOCUMENTS
Just four days after pledging to open up his entire military file, President Bush has reneged on the pledge, with "Administration officials declining yesterday to commit to releasing further records" on top of the inconclusive ones they have already released. Additionally, new charges have surfaced that Bush actually deployed his Texas gubernatorial staff to destroy incriminating records.
As first reported by the Dallas Morning News, retired National Guard Lt.
Col. Bill Burkett said that, in 1997, Joe Allbaugh (chief of staff for then-Governor Bush) told the National Guard chief to get the Bush file and make certain "there's not anything there that will embarrass the governor."
Burkett said that a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin, he "saw Mr.
Bush's file and documents from it discarded in a trash can."
While the White House has claimed the attack is baseless, Burkett's credibility was bolstered today after the New York Times reported that he made his complaint known right after the incident. In 1998, he sent a letter to a member of the Texas State Senate saying Bush and his aides improperly reviewed the file to "make sure nothing will embarrass the governor during his re-election campaign." Burkett repeated in interviews this week that Bush and his aides "ordered Guard officials to remove damaging information from Mr. Bush's military personnel files."
Yesterday, the commander of the Alabama unit Bush claimed he served in during his year-long absence said "[Bush] never did come to my squad. He was never at my unit." Additionally, in a signed report, commanding officers in Houston said Bush "has not been observed." In order to clear up the controversy, the president would have to follow through on his Sunday pledge to release all of his records rather than continue stonewalling.
George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama
The result of an investigation into George W. Bush's lost year in 1972 reveals a cocky privileged son who used his family connections to avoid military service in Vietnam and spend seven months in Alabama partying. He clearly skipped out on National Guard duty and avoided a mandatory drug test, all while learning the politics of "dirty tricks," deception and coded racism in the land of George Wallace.
It was the year Wallace, the spunky Alabama governor and presidential candidate, was gunned down in a Maryland parking lot, the year of the Watergate break in and the beginning of the end for "Tricky Dick" Nixon. It was also the last year for segregationists to openly fight integration of the public schools, a time when racism went underground in American politics in the form of a "Dixie Strategy." And it was the beginning of a major political realignment that transformed the American South from a one-party Democratic stronghold into a solid block for the GOP.
Bush made the move to Alabama in May to work on Winton "Red" Blount's campaign for the U.S. Senate against Southern Democrat John Sparkman. The lessons of that year were not lost on Bush or his political adviser Karl Rove, who also cut his political teeth in 1972. Their path to electoral success is a lesson in itself about the state of American Democracy, an issue suitable for an H.L. Mencken-style analysis.
Privileged Son
Those who encountered Bush in Alabama remember him as an affable social drinker who acted younger than his 26 years. Referred to as George Bush, Jr. by newspapers in those days, sources say he also tended to show up late every day, around noon or one, at Blount's campaign headquarters in Montgomery. They say Bush would prop his cowboy boots on a desk and brag about how much he drank the night before.
They also remember Bush's stories about how the New Haven, Connecticut police always let him go, after he told them his name, when they stopped him "all the time" for driving drunk as a student at Yale in the late 1960s. Bush told this story to others working in the campaign "what seemed like a hundred times," says Red Blount's nephew C. Murphy Archibald, now an attorney in Charlotte, N.C., who also worked on the Blount campaign and said he had "vivid memories" of that time.
"He would laugh uproariously as though there was something funny about this. To me, that was pretty memorable, because here he is, a number of years out of college, talking about this to people he doesn't know," Archibald said. "He just struck me as a guy who really had an idea of himself as very much a child of privilege, that he wasn't operating by the same rules."
During this period Bush often socialized with the young ladies of Huntington College, located in the Old Cloverdale historic neighborhood where he stayed. Bush even dated Nixon's daughter Tricia in the early 1970s, according to newspaper accounts. Bush was described as "young and personable" by the Montgomery Independent society columnist, and seen dancing at the Whitley Hotel on election night November 7 with "the blonde, pretty Emily Marks."
During the 2000 campaign, the Boston Globe named Marks as one of Bush's former girlfriends. But she and several other women who dated him during that time refused to say anything bad on the record about Bush, now a sitting president.
Many of those who came into close contact with Bush say he liked to drink beer and Jim Beam whiskey, and to eat fist-fulls of peanuts, and Executive burgers, at the Cloverdale Grill. They also say he liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the head for a line of cocaine. The newspapers that year are full of stories about the scourge of cocaine from Vietnam and China, much of it imported by the French. (Remember the French Connection?)
According to Cathy Donelson, a daughter of old Montgomery but one of the toughest investigative reporters to work for newspapers in Alabama over the years, the 1960s came to Old Cloverdale in the early 1970s about the time of Bush's arrival.
"We did a lot of drugs in those days," she said. "The 1970s are a blur."
The top radio hits in 1972 included "My Ding-A-Ling" by Chuck Berry, "Honky Cat" by Elton John, "Long Cool Woman" by the Hollies and "Feeling Alright" by Joe Cocker, along with "I Am Woman" by Helen Reddy, "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young, "Ben" by Michael Jackson and "Black and White" by Three Dog Night.
It was that kind of year.
To "Blount's Belles," a group of young Republican women and Montgomery debutantes working for the Blount campaign, Bush is remembered showing up in "denim" and cowboy boots. To one who talked about those times but requested anonymity, "We thought he was to die for."
Winton Bount's son Tom, an accomplished architect who designed the Shakespeare Festival Theater in Montgomery, remembers well his encounter with Bush. He recently co-produced and underwrote a telling movie called The Trip, set in the period from 1973 to the early 1980s, about a young gay Texan and his conservative Republican lover. The son known as "Tommy" said he ended up in the same car with Bush, with Bush driving, on election night.
"He was an attractive person, kind of a 'frat boy,'" Blount said. "I didn't like him."
He remembers thinking to himself, "This guy thinks he is such a cuntsman, God's gift to women," he said. "He was all duded up in his cowboy boots. It was sort of annoying seeing all these people who thought they were hot shit just because they were from Texas."
Bush also made an impression on the "Blue-Haired Platoon," a group of older Republican Women working for Blount. Behind his back they called him "the Texas soufflé," Archibald said, because he was "all puffed up and full of hot air."
Archibald was recruited by Blount's Washington staff for his administrative skills after returning home from a tour of duty as a lieutenant in Vietnam.
Failure of Duty
Bush avoided Vietnam by using family connections to move ahead in line for acceptance into the National Guard in Texas, where he was assigned to train as a pilot on the F-102 Delta Dagger, a plane the military had schedule for the scrap heap. It never made into service during Vietnam, which guaranteed Bush would never have to go himself.
That May, Bush first requested a transfer from his Texas unit to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base, a postal unit, after he had already moved to Alabama to work on Blount's campaign. The transfer was approved by his superiors in Houston, after the fact, but ultimately denied up the chain of command, since the unit only met one weekend night a month and had no airplanes. Bush was finally approved for a transfer on Sept. 5, five months after he had already established a residence in Alabama, to the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery. His orders, available on the Net, required him to report to the unit commander, Gen. William Turnipseed. He is named in the orders.
In interviews with the Boston Globe in 2000, Turnipseed and his administrative officer in 1972, Kenneth K. Lott, said they had no memory of Bush ever reporting, and could produce no documentation that he ever even checked in.
''Had he reported in, I would have had some recall, and I do not,'' Turnipseed said. ''I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered.''
In a follow-up interview, Turnipseed acted like he wished the story would go away, but said, "Yes, I think I would have remembered."
Rewards offered by veterans groups in Alabama and Texas for any proof that Bush showed up have never been claimed. There were 700 active guardsmen in Alabama at that time and not one who saw him on the base has come forward. Even an extensive investigation by the president's campaign staff could not turn up a shred of evidence that Bush pulled any duty, according to newspaper accounts.
Perhaps the reason he didn't log any time toward his six-year commitment was because the base had no Delta Daggers, although that would not explain why he was granted an after-the-fact transfer there in the first place. Or perhaps it had something to do with the military's new policy of mandatory drug screening, implemented in April. Bush's required physical exam officially came up in August due to his birth date, but records indicate he never showed up for a physical in Montgomery or when he returned to Houston after the election.
Bush was never punished for skirting Guard requirements, even though the military had passed a rule in in 1969 warning volunteers that failure to fulfill the contract would result in immediate selection for active duty in Vietnam. For not taking a physical, though, he was grounded that August and never flew again, records show, until last year when he reportedly says he took the "stick" in a Navy plane on his way to declare "mission accomplished" over Iraq on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.
The gap in Bush's military records for 1972, and his lack of a full answer to the question about his drug use, generated stories during the 2000 campaign. Bush refused for months to say whether he had ever used illegal drugs. Then he changed his stance, according to the Boston Globe, saying he had not used illegal drugs "since 1974."
Two books now contain the charge that Bush was arrested for possession of cocaine in 1972 in Texas, most likely in late November or December after his stint in Alabama. Bush was allowed to perform community service in 1973 by working for a minority children's program in Houston, Professionals United for Leadership League (PULL), chaired by his father. The record of that arrest was expunged, meaning he apparently received the equivalent of Youthful Offender status at the age of 26.
There are several possible interpretations of whether Bush can be called AWOL during that period, or even a Deserter. Activist film maker Michael Moore's claim that George W. Bush was a Deserter when he skipped out on National Guard duty in 1972 is one interpretation, but is not entirely based on the facts or a correct interpretation of military regulations.
According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a soldier would be considered Absent Without Leave (AWOL) if missing from his unit for 30 days or less. If absent for more than 30 days, a soldier would be considered a Deserter, if he had "no intention of returning."
But Bush's superiors, at least in Houston, knew where he was. He did come back and received an honorable discharge.
Moore's claim was dodged by Democratic candidate for president Wesley Clark during a New Hampshire debate on Fox News in January, in response to pointed questions by Peter Jennings of ABC and Brent Hume of Fox in response to Moore's endorsement of Cark the previous week.
The debate about whether Bush was AWOL, as the Boston Globe reported, or deserves Deserter status, as claimed by Moore, may be missing the point. It may be more accurate to say that while Bush was not technically AWOL or a Deserter, he was allowed to do things no average member of the National Guard would ever be allowed to do. Any other member of the Guard, without Bush's family connections, would be expected to wait until a transfer approval went through before leaving town, much less moving four states away to work for a political campaign. Also, the military does not usually grant transfers to soldiers to units that have a purpose with no resemblance to their training.
So the point is, Bush is no military hero. He is no Wesley Clark, or John Kerry, both of whom earned purple hearts and other medals for being injured in the line of duty.
Dirty Tricks
It is also apparent that Bush learned one of his first lessons in the politics of "dirty tricks," deception and coded racism in 1972. It was the biggest year for "Tricky Dick" style dirty tricks in American politics. A group of Cubans working secretly for the Committee to Reelect the President, otherwise known as CREEP, broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington on June 17.
Just prior to the day on May 15 when Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace took a bullet in a Maryland parking lot — a shock but a political relief for President Richard Nixon and Democratic candidate George McGovern in a race for the White House themselves — Bush was recruited for the Blount campaign by another Texan and Bush family friend named Jimmy Allison.
In several documented accounts, Allison is described as the original Republican political pro who may have inspired Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan's gung-ho political director, and Karl Rove, who is credited with orchestrating Bush's successful run for the White House in 2000. Atwater and Rove are reported to have taken a drive together across the South in 1972 campaigning for Rove's bid to lead the College Republicans, so it is safe to say they cut their political teeth that year as well as Bush.
Rove won that bid and dropped out of the University of Utah, then moved to Washington to become executive director of the College Republicans, even though he was accused of dirty tricks during that campaign. The Republican National Committee, chaired at that time by Bush's father, investigated but eventually cleared Rove of any wrong doing, even though Rove admitted using a false identity to gain entry to the campaign offices of Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon. He admitted stealing letterhead stationary and sending out 1,000 fake invitations to the campaign headquarters opening, promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing."
Allison had managed the senior Bush's campaigns for Congress and served as vice chairman of the Republican National Committee. Archibald remembers being impressed with the "Allisons," thinking he would see more of Jimmy and his wife in the future, certainly more than Bush.
"Allison was extremely bright and a well organized political operative," he said.
Archibald remembers one speech Allison delivered to the campaign staff and a group of British students. He said Allison talked about Wallace's domination of state politics since his first election as governor in 1962, and his "racist appeal." Some in the campaign were hoping to portray Blount as a pro-business moderate, Archibald said. But Tom Blount remembers his dad, who died two years ago, having regrets about the dirty campaign tactics. Dividing people by coded racism became a staple of the Southern Strategy leading up to Willie Horton ads used successfully by the first Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988.
One of Bush's duties as "campaign coordinator," according to his official title in the newspapers, was to stay in contact by phone with campaign managers in Alabama's 67 counties, and to handle the distribution of all campaign materials, Archibald says. That material included a pamphlet accusing Sparkman of being soft on the race issue. It also included a doctored tape from a radio debate distorting Sparkman's position on busing.
Sparkman was forced to deny a series of false charges linking him with McGovern, the North Dakota presidential candidate who became the first in the modern era to be tainted and stomped as a "liberal." The pamphlet distributed to campaign workers and leaked to the press charged Sparkman with favoring drastic defense cuts, big federal spending, abandoning American POWs in Vietnam, a guaranteed wage for every American, relaxing drug laws, amnesty for draft dodgers and "forced busing."
The Birmingham News ran the transcript of the doctored radio tape on November 6, the day before the election, which made it appear Sparkman was in favor of busing black and white children miles across towns to "mix" the public schools. The literature of the campaign echoed the winning conservative Senate race of Ed Gurney in Florida, also dreamed up by Allison and company. Blount's campaign, awash in cash with twice the money of Sparkman's, paid for billboards across the state proclaiming: "A vote for Red Blount is a vote against forced busing . . . against coddling criminals . . . against welfare freeloaders."
While Sparkman was a moderate on the race issue compared to Wallace, and got the support of African Americans who only had the right to vote for seven years, Sparkman said he not only voted against the bill, but co-sponsored it and spoke against it on the Senate floor. The anti-forced busing bill, which would have blocked busing and killed desegregation for all practical purposes, died a few weeks later when the Republicans and Southern Democrats in the Senate could not garner enough votes for cloture. It was the last gasp on the part of segregationists to prevent the federal courts from enforcing desegregation of the public schools, a fight that started in earnest with the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. (Topeka, Kansas) Board of Education.
Archibald says Allison called him aside and asked him quietly to take over some of Bush's campaign duties, so he ended up handling the Republican women and the counties in the final days of the campaign. Apparently Bush was more interested in hanging out with "Blount's Belles."
Some of the women, young and old, came from Union Springs, where Archibald grew up in the enviable position of being the nephew of Blount, also originally from Union Springs, just a short drive southeast of Montgomery. It is a land of rolling hills, lakes, forests and wide cow pastures, where the mostly African American population of Bullock County is largely made up of descendents of slaves, and a few slave owners. Little white churches are almost as common as white-tailed deer on the run from hunters in camouflage and bright orange. During the past century, pine plantations for paper and wood products replaced cotton as the chief agricultural crop.
Blount's construction and manufacturing empire prospered in the new industrial economy here. The first big construction deal for Blount Brother's construction was signed with the Saudi government. On one occasion Archibald's uncle banked a check for $334 million to build a university in Saudi Arabia. The check is on display in Blount's ghostwritten biography in the Shakespeare theater box office and gift shop on Vaughn Road. In the caption, Blount brags about how he rushed the check into the bank to get that $200,000 a day in interest flowing "as quickly as possible."
Winton Blount IV now carries on the family tradition, according to newspaper accounts, subcontracting for the likes of Halliburton and Bechtel in Saudi Arabia and Iraq today.
The "interlocking directorates" of the Bush family, their friends and this administration is documented by conservative Republican author Kevin Phillips in his book American Dynasty, although he doesn't deal with the Blount connection in detail. George H. W. Bush and Winton Blount met and became tight in Washington during the Nixon years, according to published accounts, when they were sometimes invited by the White House to play doubles together on the south lawn tennis court.
Blount had served as southeastern campaign chair for Nixon in his run against John Kennedy in 1960. He served as president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1969 before accepting Nixon's appointment as Postmaster General in 1970, where he generated a major national controversy by laying off 33,000 postal workers. He quit that job to run for office and try to help capture the Senate for the Republican Party in 1972, but lost by a 24-point margin, in spite of the political pros from Texas, and the deceptive campaign practices.
Nixon appointed Bush's daddy Ambassador to the United Nations in 1972, a well publicized fact that was known to campaign workers and Guard personnel in Alabama. He would be appointed by President Gerald Ford as head of the CIA in 1976 and go on to serve as Ronald Reagan's vice president, then as president in his own right for one term. Bush Jr's. granddaddy Prescott Bush was a successful industrialist from Kennebunkport, Maine, who served as a U.S. Senator. Since leaving public office, the former President Bush now sits on the board of the Carlyle Group, which has been accused of profiteering off the war his son started, doing business with Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other oil-rich countries in the Middle East.
It is worth noting in this context that several members of Osama bin Laden's family from Saudi Arabia were onboard the only plane allowed to fly out of the country after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, an incident that has never been adequately explained by the Bush administration or the commission investigating the attacks.
The Real Vets
All of these connections and events have weighed heavily on the mind of retired attorney Lewis Odom, a veteran himself who managed Senator Sparkman's winning campaign in 1972. He was Allison's counterpart, though he never met Bush personally during the campaign. But he does remember being aware of a group of political pros from Texas in Alabama working for Blount, and being appalled at the deceptions of the campaign.
Odom, who served as a JAG officer in Korea and as a member of the Alabama Air National Guard, only learned later that Bush was in the state working for Blount while skipping out on Vietnam and his Guard duties. But he remembers the radio tape and transcript.
"It was doctored to make it appear as if Sparkman was in favor of forced-busing, which in Alabama at the time was political death," he said.
Odom said the Bush campaign has tried to dismiss the president's early transgressions since they happened so long ago, although he points out that Bill Clinton did not get a "free ride" on the issue of his own history as a so-called "draft dodger" and "womanizer," even impeached in his second term.
Why is Bush's past important to examine now?
"It seems to me to be important because Bush is willing to send our boys and girls over there to get shot, killed and wounded, to lose their arms and legs," Odom said. "Then in his own life, he did what he could to avoid it (going to war). And then later, he presents himself as a fighter pilot, parading around on that flight deck with his fighter pilot jacket on with 'Commander In Chief'' on it."
Odom said the Guard probably spent a half a million dollars training Bush, then he wouldn't even take his flight exam and failed to check the box on the form making himself available for active duty. Later, Bush was transferred on paper to a Guard unit in Colorado prior to his early release to attend Harvard Business School.
"I see him out parading around as if he was some sort of a military hero, when the truth about the matter is, he used his father's prestige in the community to get into the Guard in the first place," Odom said. "And then he used it to get himself transferred to Alabama to work on a political campaign."
State of Democracy
Many Americans, including Odom and a lot of combat veterans, wonder how things might have been handled differently if only Bush had served real time in the military and not skated because of his privileged son status. Would he have been as likely to go to war in Iraq so quickly and on such flimsy evidence, bringing the world to the brink of an all out religious war between Christians and Jews against the Muslim world and turning much of Europe and the rest of the world against the U.S.?
That is a question that cannot be answered in hindsight. But in a democracy, it is not supposed to matter what bloodline you come from or what religion you practice. What should matter to a candidate for the highest office in the most powerful country in the world is the quality of his life, work and character.
What does Bush's success say about the state of American Democracy?
The Bush White House openly promotes democracy around the world, committing the full force of American military power to try creating a capitalist democracy in Iraq. Yet Bush's entire history of success fosters the mentality of a Royal Monarchy at home.
BUSH STILL REFUSES TO RELEASE MILITARY DOCUMENTS
On Sunday, President Bush pledged in the Oval Office to release any and all documents related to whether he fulfilled his Vietnam-era National Guard duty. And yesterday, the White House claimed the documents it released fulfilled that Oval Office pledge. However, just hours after that declaration, White House communications director Dan Bartlett "confirmed that Bush's complete personnel file is being forwarded to Washington from an archive in Denver" but only "for review" by the White House - not necessarily release to the public.
Military experts said records like those being "reviewed" by the White House could definitively prove where Bush was, unlike those documents released yesterday which do not. But records such as those being "reviewed" by the White House "cannot be released without Bush's authorization," a process that would simply require the president to sign release forms (see a sample form). To date "Bush has not consented, despite his claim that he made public all his records in 2000." Without that authorization, the government has denied Freedom of Information Act requests seeking relevant documents.
The White House claimed the documents it released yesterday show "President Bush fulfilling his duties in the National Guard" during Vietnam. However, the documents released actually showed that Bush "did not receive military pay from May to September of 1972" - a five month gap in service where Bush also "refused to take his annual physical and was grounded as a pilot."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to say whether Bush actually showed up for service, only saying that Bush was paid. In all, the records "do not show the exact nature or whereabouts of Bush's service during that period."
In a year spanning 1972 and 1973, Bush claims to have served in the Alabama National Guard and in Houston, but the White House cannot produce a single human being to validate that claim. While Bush says there is "no evidence"
to prove whether he did or did not show up for service, that is not true - those who would have overseen his service specifically report that he was absent. In Alabama, the commander of the unit Bush would have been in said today, "He never did come to my squad. He was never at my unit."
Additionally, in a signed report, commanding officers in Houston said Bush "has not been observed."
Bush at Sea: Does this war president have any idea what he's talking about?
SLATE
Going over the transcript of Tim Russert's interview with President Bush, a disturbing question comes to mind: Is the president telling lies and playing with semantics, or is he unaware of what's going on—including inside his own administration?
Two sections of the interview particularly stand out in this regard: a) Bush's defense of the war in Iraq, despite his concession that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction; and b) his views on the war in Vietnam.
Russert asked Bush what he made of the recent comments by David Kay, who recently resigned as the CIA's chief weapons inspector, that Iraq did not have biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons after all. Bush replied:
David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons. … There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a danger to America … because he had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon … and then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network. … He could have developed a nuclear weapon over time. I'm not saying immediately, but over time, which would then have put us in what position? We would have been in a position of blackmail.
There are many remarkable things about this statement, but let us note just two.
First, President Bush seems to be vastly enlarging his doctrine of pre-emptive warfare. This doctrine originally declared that the United States has the right to attack a hostile power that possesses weapons of mass destruction. The idea was that we must sometimes strike first, in order to prevent the other side from striking us.
Now, however, the president is asserting a right to strike first not merely if a hostile power has deadly weapons or even if it is building such weapons, but also if it might build such weapons sometime in the future.
The original doctrine, though controversial, at least stemmed from the logic of self-defense. Bush's expansion of the doctrine, as implied in his remarks to Tim Russert, does not.
If no commentators have noted, or perhaps even noticed, this new spin on American military policy, it may be because they don't take Bush's unscripted remarks seriously. (It's just Bush, talking off the top of his head. No sense parsing the implications.) That in itself is quite a commentary on this president. But it's not clear that these particular remarks were unscripted. Bush used the same phrase—"a capacity to make a weapon"—three times; it was almost certainly a part of his brief. Either the statement means something—that we now reserve the right to wage pre-emptive war on a hostile power that has the mere capacity to make weapons of mass destruction—or it's empty blather. It's unclear which would be more unsettling.
Second, unless the president is defining the "capacity to make a weapon" in an extremely loose sense, David Kay said nothing of the sort. When Kay said he'd concluded that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction in the months leading up to the war, he elaborated with this comment: "We don't find the people, the documents, or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on."
No people, no documents, no physical plants—it doesn't sound like much "capacity."
On chemical weapons in particular, Kay said that Iraq's infrastructure was destroyed by President Clinton's air strikes in 1998. On biological weapons, Kay noted in his written report last October that his team had found laboratories that "may have engaged in research." On nuclear weapons, the report cited only "small and unsophisticated research initiatives … that could be useful in developing a weapons-related science base for the long term." (Italics added.)
Also worthy of note were Bush's comments on the war in Vietnam. Russert asked him whether he supported that war. Bush replied that he did, sort of. The president added:
The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war. We had politicians making military decisions, and it is a lesson that any president must learn, and that is to set the goal and the objective and allow the military to come up with the plans to achieve that objective. And those are essential lessons to be learned from the Vietnam War.
This is the great conservative shibboleth about the Vietnam War—that we lost the war because Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and to a lesser extent President Lyndon Johnson, put too many constraints on the generals, telling them which targets they could and could not hit. But it's very odd for George W. Bush to be reciting this case because the two wars he's commanded, in Afghanistan and Iraq, have been, in this sense, the most "political" wars in recent American history.
While Bush himself may not have done much micromanaging of the war, his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, not only helped pick targets, but rearranged the structure of the units sent into battle. In preparing for Iraq, he ordered the removal of several heavy-artillery battalions from Army divisions. In the weeks leading up to the invasion of Afghanistan, he rejected several war plans submitted by Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. Central Command, until the general devised an unprecedented combination of troops and special operations commandos that conformed to Rumsfeld's concept of "military transformation" and smaller, lighter forces.
The interesting thing about this blatant intrusion into the nuts and bolts of military planning is that Rumsfeld was right. With the advent of very precise "smart bombs," aerial drones with real-time video transmissions, and computerized command-control networks that allowed for much greater coordination between air forces and ground troops, the Army didn't need so much artillery; air power could break up enemy defenses in a way that, in an earlier era, only artillery could. Or at least Rumsfeld was right in the battlefield phase of the war. He should have paid more attention to his generals in planning how many troops would be needed after victory was declared.
But the point here is that if civilian interference is "the thing about the Vietnam War that troubles" George W. Bush, why wasn't he troubled about the way his own wars were planned and fought, for better and for worse? Or has he ever really been troubled about the Vietnam War, back then or now? And was he aware of the intense internecine fighting between Rumsfeld and the Army over the war plans for Iraq? The main message that President Bush tried to send during his session with Russert was that he is a leader in command. "I'm a war president," he said at the start. "I make decisions here in the Oval Office on foreign policy matters with war on my mind." But in some of his remarks that followed, the president cast doubt on how much he's even in the loop.
