No More Corporate Tax Holidays -- Make Corporations Pay Their Fair Share

While April 15 is no tax holiday for millions of individual American taxpayers scrambling to get their returns in, it might as well be for many U.S. corporations.
At a time of exploding Federal deficits and unmet public needs, we cannot afford corporate tax evasion. Recent reports from the General Accounting Office show that more than 60% of large U.S. corporations paid NO federal taxes from 1996 through 2000, years when the economy was booming. In today’s weaker economy, tax receipts from companies have fallen even steeper -- corporate taxes now account for a mere 7.5 percent of overall federal tax receipts, the lowest rate since 1983. For a comparison, during WWII corporate taxes accounted for about 40% of federal tax receipts.
Fortunately, there are two easy solutions that do not even involve raising tax rates -- better enforcement and closing loopholes.
While the Bush administration has talked a tough game about getting serious with tax cheats, recent analysis reported in the New York Times shows that "tax enforcement has fallen steadily under President Bush, with fewer audits, fewer penalties, fewer prosecutions and virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes." With the odds of being audited at near zero, it is no wonder that illegal corporate tax avoidance is skyrocketing.
But legal tax avoidance is also rising. Corporations increasingly avoid paying their fair share through the "Bermuda Triangle loophole" -- a paper or P.O. Box relocation of a company's headquarters to a tax haven country so as to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Efforts to push through the Corporate Patriot Enforcement Act to close this loophole have been stymied by Republican leadership that refuses to even bring the legislation up for a vote.
The IRS estimates that the U.S. Treasury may be losing billions of dollars each year due to aggressive tax avoidance, and it's time to make corporations pay up. Individuals shouldn't be the only ones to get a tax bill due this April 15.
Call to action
Urge your representatives to get tough on corporate tax cheats by closing the "Bermuda Triangle loophole" by supporting the Corporate Patriot Enforcement Act (HR 737) and increasing the funding and authority of the IRS to get tough with corporate tax cheats through a substantial increase in audits and other enforcement measures.

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in Federal Mandatory Programs

Our low, low corporate taxes—and high, high corporate tax subsidies
Contrary to the constant whining that members of Congress hear from corporate lobbyists, corporate income taxes in the United States have fallen so much over the past few decades that they now are virtually the lowest among the world’s developed countries. Here are a few salient facts, taken from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s October 2002 comparison of taxes among its member countries:
■ In 1965, U.S. federal, state and local corporate income taxes were 4.1 percent of our gross domestic product, compared to 2.4 percent of GDP in the other OECD countries.
■ But by 2000, U.S. corporate income taxes had dropped to 2.5 percent of GDP, while corporate income taxes in the other OECD countries had risen to 3.4 percent of GDP. That placed us 22nd among the 29 reporting OECD countries.
■ In 2002, the last year for which full federal, state and local figures are available, U.S. corporate taxes plummeted to only 1.5 percent of our GDP. That’s below the most recently reported corporate tax levels in any other OECD country except Iceland.
■ Looking only at the U.S. federal tax system, corporate income taxes have fallen to only 1.2 percent of the GDP this year and last—69 percent below their 3.8 percent share of GDP in the 1960s.
This sharp drop in corporate tax payments in the United States in recent years has not been caused by a lower statutory corporate tax rate, but rather by an explosion in congressionally-enacted tax subsidies and a wave of corporate tax-sheltering activity. As a result, most of the profits that corporations report to their shareholders are never reported on their tax returns. In fact, it appears that this year corporate taxes as a percent of U.S. profits will fall to well under 15 percent—probably only about a third of the statutory corporate rate of 35 percent.
Recent legislation has vastly expanded tax-based corporate subsidies
In early 2002, Congress enacted the largest corporate tax reduction in a generation, primarily by greatly expanding the amount that companies can write off for wear and tear on their equipment. This $114 billion expansion in business tax subsidies was defended as a supposed “stimulus” to our ailing economy, and was supposed to “sunset” in the fall of 2004, then to be followed by partially offsetting big corporate tax increases in future years. But last month, the 2002 “depreciation” tax subsidies were extended and increased (and the bill initially passed by the House would have provided an even longer extension).
The combination of the 2002 and 2003 corporate tax changes is expected to increase business tax subsidies by a total of $178 billion in fiscal 2002-2004. For corporations, that will cut income tax payments by 25 percent over that period. And if the revised “sunset” date is waived after the end next year, then the cost of these programs will exceed $400 billion over a decade.
Under current depreciation rules, the profits generated by equipment investments often aren’t taxed at all. Instead, many investments enjoy “negative” tax rates, that is, they are more profitable after tax than before. A whole industry has risen up to help companies with excess tax subsidies to sell the excess to other companies, typically through leveraged leasing deals, thereby making the tax subsidies essentially “refundable.”
On its face, the asserted purpose of the recent corporate “stimulus” bills seems sadly misdirected. For the past few years, our economy has faced serious excess capacity: businesses can make more products than consumers want to buy. Oddly, Congress and President Bush concluded that rather than trying to boost demand, the answer to the over-capacity problem was to try to encourage even more over-capacity. Not surprisingly, this nonsensical strategy hasn’t worked. By the end of 2002 the Business Roundtable reported that more than 80 percent of its members planned no added investment—although they were surely happy to take the money for doing what they would have done anyway.
Yet confronted with the abject failure of the previous effort at economic stimulus, Congress and the President have not admitted their mistake. Instead, they concluded that throwing good money after bad was the best policy and included even bigger corporate depreciation subsidies in the 2003 tax bill.
Offshore corporate tax-sheltering schemes have pushed corporate subsidies still higher
The fact that Congress was so eager to extend its obviously failed corporate “stimulus” program illustrates just how hard it is to eliminate tax-based spending programs once they are placed in the tax code. But while the justification for the recent corporate “stimulus” legislation is shaky in the extreme, Congress’s tolerance of the wave of abusive offshore corporate tax shelters that have emerged in recent years is even worse.
By way of background, the traditional goal of U.S. corporate tax policy is to tax companies—whether American or foreign-owned—on the profits that they earn in the United States. We give a full tax credit for taxes paid on profits earned abroad, that is, actually earned abroad. For their part, corporations try very hard to make their U.S. profits appear to be foreign on paper, in order to avoid paying taxes to any country. In recent years, major accounting firms have designed an array of abusive tax shelters that have hugely expanded such paper profit shifting.
Everyone has heard about the dozens of American companies that have chosen to renounce their American citizenship and reincorporate in Bermuda or other tax haven countries to avoid paying taxes on their U.S. profits. In the face of public outrage, only a few politicians are willing to publicly defend this unpatriotic practice.
But the Bermuda tax-avoidance scheme is only the tip of a vast iceberg of corporate offshore tax sheltering—all designed to shift U.S. profits, on paper, outside the United States. Congress and the President have failed to act to curb these abuses, which all together are costing the Treasury and ordinary taxpayers on the order of $50 billion or more a year.
Earlier this year, the Senate version of the 2003 tax cut bill proposed to take a few small steps toward curbing the Bermuda loophole, “Enron-style abuses,” and other indefensible corporate tax-shelter subsidies. But even these modest changes were rejected out of hand by the House.
In fact, the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee has made it clear that he favors a vast expansion in subsidies for offshore tax sheltering. Last year in H.R. 5095, he proposed $83 billion in additional subsidies to encourage offshore tax avoidance, only slightly offset by the $14 billion in temporary tax-shelters curbs he felt forced to propose in response to public outrage over the Bermuda loophole.
Of course, some may argue that there should be no taxes on corporate profits, or on any kind of investment income for that matter, and that only wages should be taxed. That indeed is the apparent opinion of the Bush Treasury Department, along with many antitax groups and some members of Congress. But even if one has that goal—totally mistaken in my view—setting up a tax system that encourages avoidance and evasion by the unscrupulous at the expense of honest corporate and individual taxpayers is indefensible.
Curbing corporate entitlements
The agenda for corporate entitlement reductions is a long one. Let me quickly highlight a few areas that ought to be given a very hard look:
■ Excess depreciation write-offs. Beyond enforcing the sunsets on the 2002 and 2003 misdirected “stimulus” bills, Congress could go considerably further in curbing unwise depreciation tax subsidies. If our goal is to tax corporations on what they really earn, then tax deductions for depreciation ought to be based on a reasonable approximation of actual wear and tear, not used as a hidden subsidy that distorts investment behavior and interferes with fair competition. In addition, depreciation write-offs on debt-financed investments could be disallowed, either completely or at least partially, as the corporate alternative minimum tax used to do before it was gutted in the 1990s.
■ Multinational tax subsidies. There are many steps that could be taken to curb our current array of wasteful, if not perverse, tax subsidies for multinational corporations. For one thing, we don’t have to let a mail drop in Bermuda turn an American company into a foreign corporation. Instead, Congress could follow the lead of countries such as Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom, and treat any ostensibly “foreign” corporation whose shares are mostly owned by Americans as American.
Going beyond the specific Bermuda loophole, we could take on offshore corporate tax sheltering generally. One important step would be to scrap an antiquated rule that lets U.S. companies indefinitely “defer” reporting their foreign profits on their U.S. tax returns. As noted above, it’s not that we want to tax actual foreign earnings: We give companies a full tax credit for the taxes they pay to foreign governments when and if they report the foreign income to the IRS. But deferral opens up the door to other scams that companies use to shift their American profits on paper to tax-haven countries, and our current anti-abuse rules are too weak. Eliminating deferral would stem these abuses and hugely simplify the corporate-tax laws to boot. That’s exactly what the Kennedy administration unsuccessfully proposed back in the early 1960s, and what both the House and the Senate passed in the mid-1970s—unfortunately not at the same time.
Congress could also consider scrapping our unworkable rules that require the IRS to examine billions of fictitious intracompany transactions, and instead adopt a combined-reporting system that allocates taxable corporate profits among countries based on a straightforward formula. Under this approach, a corporate tax would apply once and only once, rather than only occasionally as is too often the case under current law.
■ Industry-specific subsidies. Using the tax code to favor particular industries and/or investments that make no economic sense in the absence of a subsidy (such as ethanol) is almost always bad policy. As part of corporate entitlement reform, Congress should consider clearing out the array of narrow-interest business subsidies that were they not hidden in the tax code, would have stood almost no chance of being enacted in the first place.
Conclusion: Eliminate the Double Standard
This year, on-budget federal revenues are expected to fall to about 11½ percent of GDP, the lowest level since before World War II, and about a quarter below the 15.9 percent level in fiscal 2000. This drop explains most of the enormous deficits we face this year and in the future. Of course, the recently enacted reductions in personal tax rates and the phase-out of the estate tax explain much of this decline. But the vast expansion in tax-based subsidy programs, particularly the hundreds of billions of dollars annually for corporations, looms very large as well.
Despite artificial bookkeeping differences, it seems obvious that programs should be evaluated on the same terms whether they are run by a regular government agency or by the IRS through the tax code. To do otherwise would elevate form over substance, and make responsible budgeting difficult or impossible.
So if this Committee is seriously interested in reducing our government’s unsustainable borrowing binge, then curbing unwarranted tax-based entitlement programs, especially the many expensive tax subsidies for corporations that fail to serve any worthwhile economic or social objective, should be high on the agenda.

POLLS: AMERICANS NOT BUYING BUSH TAX CUT RHETORIC

President Bush is scheduled to tout his tax cuts today at a Tax Day event in Iowa. He is expected to repeat his oft-heard mantra that tax cuts have helped all Americans. But according to a new poll by Money Magazine, "60% of Americans said the Bush tax cut did not personally help them" .
Meanwhile, almost half of all Americans say that their taxes have risen under Bush. And a look at the record shows exactly why that majority opinion is factually correct.
According to a non-partisan analysis, in the year 2006 88% of Americans will receive less than $100 from the president's 2003 tax cut. Additionally, the president has refused to extend the full child tax credit to 16 million children, including 250,000 children of military families. At the same time, the president's 2004 budget proposed an increase of almost $6 billion in new federal taxes and fees while creating record-deficits that have forced states to raise taxes by $14.5 billion since 2001. And to top it off, he has reduced IRS audits of large profitable corporations whose tax rates have plummeted, while increasing IRS audits of ordinary Americans.
Of course, there is a handful of people who are reaping a personal windfall from Bush's tax policy: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their top campaign donors. The president himself pocketed more than $30,000 in new tax breaks this year while the Vice President took in an extra $11,000. And a new Public Campaign report shows that top Bush-Cheney contributors are raking in even more. For instance, Charles Cawley, CEO of credit card giant MBNA, raised more than $200,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaign and was rewarded with at least $276,000 in tax breaks. Similarly, William MaGuire, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, raised more than $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaign and will get at least $329,000 in new tax breaks from President Bush.

George W. Bush: Neocon Napoleon

He wants to 'change the world' – at gunpoint
by Justin Raimondo

George W. Bush wants to "change the world": he said so a few dozen times the other night in his Q&A with reporters. That was his ultimate answer to everything. When confronted at his recent press conference with the embarrassing paucity, in retrospect, of the case for war – the complete absence of WMD in Iraq, of links to Al Qaeda, of any sense that the Iraqis consider us their "liberators" – the President had a ready answer:
"A secure and free Iraq is an historic opportunity to change the world and make America more secure."
Uh, yes, Mr. President, but what about rising sentiment against the war?
"And as to whether or not I make decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way. I fully understand the consequences of what we're doing. We're changing the world…."
Yes, but, with all due respect, Mr. President – where's the beef? What happened to all those "weapons of mass destruction" that supposedly threatened not only Iraq's neighbors, but also the continental United States?
"And, of course, I want to know why we haven't found a weapon yet. But I still know Saddam Hussein was a threat, and the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. I don't think anybody can – maybe people can argue that. I know the Iraqi people don't believe that, that they're better off with Saddam Hussein – would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power. I also know that there's an historic opportunity here to change the world…."
But what about the rising rebellion in Iraq against the occupation – and not only from neo-Ba'athists but also Shi'ites, who were initially not our enemies, or at least were willing to give us the benefit of a doubt, and have now turned decisively against us? And our allies aren't exactly enthusiastic: in terms of troops on the ground, the "coalition" is mostly American. Shouldn't we get out while the going is good?
"That's what they want to do – they want us to leave. And we're not going to leave. We're going to do the job. And a free Iraq is going to be a major blow for terrorism. It will change the world."
The President stumbled through most of the Q&A, but there was one point where he waxed passionate, and became momentarily articulate, as if possessed by some neocon demon speaking through presidential lips:
"One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we're asking questions, is, can you ever win the war on terror? Of course, you can. That's why it's important for us to spread freedom throughout the Middle East….
"That's why I'm pressing the Greater Middle East Reform Initiative, to work to spread freedom. And we will continue on that. So long as I'm the President, I will press for freedom. I believe so strongly in the power of freedom."
This is the only moment in the whole painful event when the President didn't look as if he were undergoing the tortures of Hell. His voice ringing with certainty, he actually seemed to be enjoying himself:
"You know why I do? Because I've seen freedom work right here in our own country. I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom."
He piously likened the spread of American power to the Christian obligation to feed the hungry, somehow forgetting those other commandments – something about not killing people, I believe. In any case, Bush's manner was smoothly messianic as he pointed out to the assembled press corps that just as "we have an obligation to lead the fight on AIDS, in Africa," so we also:
"Have an obligation to work toward a more free world. That's our obligation. That is what we have been called to do, as far as I'm concerned. And my job as the President is to lead this nation into making the world a better place. And that's exactly what we're doing. Weeks such as we've had in Iraq make some doubt whether or not we're making progress. I understand that. It was a tough, tough period. But we are making progress."
In this moment of spontaneity, unscripted by Karl Rove and completely unfiltered, Bush revealed the madness at the heart of his presidency, the corruption that eats away at the White House and infuses Washington, the Imperial City, like a dense hallucinogenic fog. He really does think his job is "to lead this nation into making the world a better place." Not defending the nation, not protecting our security, not getting out of the way of prosperity, but "changing the world."
Hey, bud, how about making America a better place?
Bush tries to argue that our own security is assured if only we'll fight endless wars overseas, but this is hardly convincing when anti-Americanism is on the rise worldwide. It is especially egregious as we watch "liberated" Iraqis put aside their ethnic and religious divisions – grudges that date back thousands of years, in some cases – in order to unite against a common enemy: the hated Americans.
But none of this phases our chief executive and Commander-in-Chief, who clearly fancies himself President, not merely of these United States, but of the World.
The radicalism of this administration is frightening to behold, and never more so than manifested, the other night, in the person of the man who stands at its head. George W. Bush morphed into Norman Podhoretz in a cowboy hat: stubborn, bellicose, grandiose, and inflexible. He clearly sees himself as an American Napoleon, destined to lead America to its enthronement as global hegemon.
Of course, there are plenty of would-be Napoleons out there, locked safely away in mental institutions, or else they have medicated their delusions into quiescence. But in the case of the President of the United States there isn't a whole lot we can do. Except, perhaps, have him declared incapacitated – but that would amount to jumping into the fire straight out of the frying pan. President Cheney would make Bush II look like Bush I.
In contemplating the actions of this administration, I am struck by something Richard Clarke said about the Iraq war in his eye-opening book:
"It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'Invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq.'"
How else do we explain the President's endorsement of Israel's annexation of lands on the West Bank? Bin Laden himself couldn't have created a more favorable environment for terrorist recruitment. It must be mind control: that would explain the clueless glaze that clouds his eyes and furrows the presidential brow with a look of perpetual perplexity.
Yeah, but who's doing the controlling? That's what I want to know.

Protect Streams from Mountaintop Removal Mining

Streams are not only a beautiful part of the Appalachian landscape, they are essential to the Appalachian way of life. Streams provide clean drinking water and they are a place where families fish and swim. They have been the sites of baptisms for generations and in Appalachia, whole communities are built around these streams.
Instead of protecting streams, the Bush administration is making it easier for mining companies to destroy them. When mining companies blow the tops off of mountains to get to a seam of coal, there are tons of mining waste left over. The stream buffer zone rule, aimed at protecting streams from being buried by mining waste, prohibits surface mining or mining activities within 100 feet of streams unless the government finds that the mining won't adversely affect the water quality or quantity (30 CFR 816.57). Filling an entire stream with mining waste, as mining companies do during mountaintop removal mining, is a violation of this rule--but the Bush administration hasn't been enforcing this rule.
Instead, the administration has turned a blind eye while mining companies have leveled mountain ranges and valleys. After thousands of miles of Appalachian streams have been buried, the Bush administration is weakening the protections for streams instead of enforcing them. The proposed rule would allow mining companies to mine next to or through streams if they can show, regardless of the damage, that mining operations won't increase the mud and other mining waste within 100 feet downstream. The coal companies also have to minimize the destruction of fish and wildlife "to the extent possible." How does one measure "to the extent possible"? If you are the mining company, you don't and the Bush administration lets you get away with it. This proposal lets mining companies off the hook for dumping mining waste into streams.
Before the Bush administration proposed this dangerous rule change, well over 80,000 Americans in Appalachia and around the country let them know that they did not want the devastation of mountain top removal to continue burying streams in Appalachia. Yet, the Bush administration proposed their change weeks before the comment period ended.
Mountaintop removal mining is turning Appalachia into a desolate moonscape, damaging drinking water supplies, causing flooding and ruining habitat for fish and wildlife. It is time to stop this devastation.

Maybe you make your home and earn your living in Appalachia. Maybe you were raised there and have since moved away, but still hold a place in your heart for these beloved mountains. Or perhaps you've only read about it, but still have a sense that this is a special place.

These mountains are threatened by logging, mountaintop removal and other kinds of coal mining, and mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Learn more about the issues facing Appalachia and then help us work to protect it. You can make a difference.

What you can do:

Take Action on Mining Waste: The Bush administration wants to weaken the rules about dumping mining waste in streams. Please submit comments by April 7, 2004, using our quick and easy Take Action Network.

Bring Back Jack! Write a letter asking for the reinstatment of whistleblower Jack Spadaro, former superintendent of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy in Beckley, W.V.

Iraq is George W. Bush's Vietnam

"This has been tough weeks for that country."
With those mangled eight words, President Bush began his pathetic news conference on Iraq. It was downhill from there. Hastily scheduled to stop the bleeding from weeks of criticism about his inaction before Sept. 11 and his rush to war in Iraq, the president's prime-time appearance was instead a total bust. He didn't answer one single question. He rambled incoherently. And he proved himself hopelessly out of touch with reality.
One year later, not one of the reasons Bush gave as imperatives for invading Iraq has proven to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons, no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden – and no way Iraq was a threat to the United States. Nothing he said about postwar Iraq has come to pass, either. American troops were not greeted as liberators, and oil revenues are not paying for Iraq's reconstruction. American taxpayers are.
Yet Bush stubbornly refuses to admit he got anything wrong. He still contends that Saddam Hussein was a serious threat. He still claims Iraq had long-range missiles. He still believes Hussein was aiding al-Qaida. He thinks Iraqis, with few exceptions, welcome American troops. He says there's plenty of money from Iraqi oil. And he still insists that, someday, we'll find those WMD. This guy is living on another planet.
The president also refuses to acknowledge any personal responsibility for failure to take preventive measures before Sept. 11. "Had we had any inkling that this was going to happen," he tried to assure the nation, "we would have done everything in our power to stop the attack." Yet the evidence is clear: He had plenty of warnings, and did nothing.
On Aug. 6, 2001, barely a month before Sept. 11, President Bush received a CIA briefing entitled "Bin Laden To Strike in U.S." The memo documented bin Laden's oft-cited determination to attack targets in Washington and New York, using hijacked airplanes. It even repeated a May 2001 warning that al-Qaida agents were in the New York area planning an attack with major explosives. The president took no action. He went fishing instead.
And the morning following his ill-fated news conference, the 9-11 Commission released a report showing that the Aug. 6 briefing was just one of many times Bush had been warned of al-Qaida.
In April and May 2001, he had been handed similar documents, called: "Bin Laden Planning Multiple Operations," "Bin Laden Network's Plans Advancing" and "Bin Laden Threats Are Real." Before Sept. 11, he also received over 40 personal briefings from CIA Director George Tenet about the growing al-Qaida threat to the United States. Again, he did nothing. The first Bush administration Cabinet meeting with al-Qaida on the agenda was not held until Sept. 4, 2001 – and Bush wasn't even present.
We've reached the point where we just can't believe anything Bush says about Sept. 11 or Iraq anymore. He can't say he did everything to protect us from terrorism, because he didn't. He can't say the war in Iraq was justified, because it wasn't. He can't say postwar Iraq is going according to plan – with 534 Americans killed since May 1, 2003, when he declared "mission accomplished" – because there is no plan.
Nor can he deny Iraq is another Vietnam. Of course, there are obvious differences. The war in Vietnam lasted 10 years and cost 58,000 American lives. The war in Iraq has lasted only 13 months and, as of April 14, taken 672 American lives. But there are also clear parallels.
In Vietnam, we were not fighting an identified army – we were fighting organized guerillas. In Vietnam, American soldiers couldn't tell the enemy from the rest of the population. In Vietnam, we were an unwanted, occupying army far from home. And in Vietnam, we had no strategy for how to get the hell out. The same is true of the quagmire we now call Iraq.
Poor George W. Bush. He wanted to be the next Ronald Reagan, but it looks like he'll become the next Lyndon Johnson instead. Except worse. At least LBJ inherited the Vietnam mess from John Kennedy. The Iraq mess is all President Bush's own making. He has nobody to blame but himself. And we have no one to blame – but him.

THE GOLDEN RULE

DEMOCRATIC:
"Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You"

REPUBLICAN:
"Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto You"

Bush Administration's Assault on the Environment

After three years, the Bush administration's environmental record is unambiguous: landmark environmental programs protecting our air, water, lands, and wildlife are weaker. This third edition of "Rewriting the Rules" documents more than 150 assaults on our environmental safeguards between January 2003 and March 2004, reflecting a destructive pace that has only accelerated during President Bush's tenure. This report also presents the recent emergence of independent voices and documentary evidence exposing the inner workings of the Bush administration's environmental onslaught, and examines the long-term repercussions of these policies.

The Year's Most Notable Environmental Assaults
Below are some of the past year's most troubling Bush administration environmental actions.

Sewage in Our Waterways
Beaches and rivers across the country are exposed to bacteria, viruses, fecal matter, and a host of other wastes from sewage releases. In the Clinton administration, the EPA proposed to address the problem through a new Clean Water Act rulemaking, the result of a lengthy consensus process that included environmentalists and federal, state, and municipal authorities. But when the Bush administration took office in January 2001, it shelved the proposal for three years of "internal review." In November 2003, the Bush administration proposed to legalize the release of inadequately treated sewage into waterways, as long as it is diluted with treated sewage, a process the agency has euphemistically labeled "blending."

Sewage in Our Drinking Water
Florida is injecting treated sewage into so-called deep wells. The injection of treated sewage has continued despite concerns that, in Florida's hydrogeology, contaminants in the treated sewage could migrate upward into the drinking water supply. Recent studies finding cryptosporidium and giardia, two bacteria that cause illnesses in people, show that this is exactly what is happening in south Florida aquifers. However, rather than bringing the waste injection to a halt, as current Safe Drinking Water Act rules require, the EPA has proposed a special exemption, just for Florida, that allows injection of treated sewage to continue.

The End of New Wilderness
In April 2003, the Bush administration reversed the federal policy at the core of the U.S. wilderness preservation system. This policy protected public lands while federal land managers assessed them for possible protection as officially designated wilderness areas. In a sweeping legal settlement with then-Utah governor and current EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt, the administration renounced the government's authority to conduct wilderness inventories on public lands or to protect more areas for their wilderness values. The sudden settlement involved no public comment or open deliberations. This new policy threatens to open millions of acres of wilderness quality public lands to drilling, mining, road building, and other development.

More Mercury Pollution in Our Air
Last year, 44 states issued warnings for eating mercury-contaminated fish, a 63 percent jump from 1993 when 27 states issued such warnings. The central sources of the problem are U.S. power plants and other industrial facilities, which together spew more than 150 tons of mercury into the air each year. But the Bush administration has refused to regulate mercury through the same tough approach used for other hazardous air pollutants, which are subject to rigorous standards under the Clean Air Act, using advanced pollution control technology. Rather than protect the public from this persistent hazard, the EPA announced a plan that allows nearly seven times the mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants than would be allowed if mercury were to be regulated like other hazardous air pollutants, and gives industry decades longer to comply. Originally, a 2018 deadline was contemplated, but the EPA is now looking at even further delay.

Reckless Energy Development
New Mexico's spectacular Otera Mesa is a banner example of the pervasive threat to our last wildlands posed by the current drive for energy development at any cost. Otero Mesa boasts more than a million acres of Chihuahuan grassland and, in a state plagued by drought, holds enough fresh drinking water to sustain half of the state's population. Although previously protected by the Bureau of Land Management policies, the Bush administration eased environmental safeguards in January 2004 to allow drilling after limited environmental analysis and public review, despite widespread local opposition.

Documentary Evidence Exposes Industry Influence
The direct influence of industry on Bush environmental policies was made painfully clear through recent documentary evidence. The documents expose the direct role of major polluters in drafting Bush administration policy, and undercut industry arguments embraced by the administration. Industry's role in crafting the administration's plan to regulate mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants was exposed in January 2004, when it was revealed that at least a dozen paragraphs in the EPA's mercury proposal were lifted, sometimes verbatim, from memos sent by a law firm that represents the utility industry. A month later, a New Jersey official pinpointed additional verbatim and paraphrased wording from a report sponsored by an industry association representing two-dozen large Western utility companies.
Meanwhile, a Department of Justice brief disclosed internal industry documents that were used as the basis for weakening the Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) rules. The Justice Department brief also says the utility industry has known for more than a decade that massive air pollution increases from coal-fired power plants violated the Clean Air Act. Industry has claimed that the NSR rules were "ambiguous" and that they were unaware of violations until the first of several high profile enforcement lawsuits in 1999. Because the documents were given to the government in November 2003, it seems the Bush administration has been promoting and defending its new Clean Air Act loopholes with full knowledge that the central basis for them was a false industry assertion.

Scientists, Judges, Senior Officials Join Chorus of Environmental Concern
In the past year numerous influential voices, sometimes from unexpected sectors, have lent their credibility to the chorus decrying the administration's direction on the environment.

Federal Courts Overturn Agency Policy
Federal courts have historically shown reluctance to overturn federal agency decisions on the environment, an attitude born out of deference to the agencies' technical expertise in these typically complex issues. Despite this high hurdle, Bush administration environmental policies have suffered a series of stinging defeats in rulings from federal judges who found the actions inconsistent with U.S. environmental laws. Several of the most important environmental assaults subject to court reversals are listed below:

The Energy Department's efforts to relax energy efficiency standards for new air conditioners.

The Interior Department rules allowing broad snowmobile access to Yellowstone National Park, characterized by a federal judge as "completely politically driven."

The Energy Department's effort to reclassify high-level nuclear waste as incidental in order to escape requirements for proper disposal.

The Interior Department's effort to allow oil exploration in public wildlands on the eastern boundary of Utah's Arches National Park.

The Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to relax the Clean Air Act's new source review requirements that require power plants and factories to install modern pollution controls when they upgrade equipment.
In the latter case, the D.C. court of appeals found the EPA's new Clean Air rules to be so damaging and legally weak that the court issued a rare stay, immediately blocking the new source review rules from taking effect, even as the court undertakes the more extensive legal review required for final disposition of the case.

Scientists Accuse the Bush Administration of Manipulating Science
In February 2004, 63 scientists -- including 20 Nobel laureates and 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science -- issued a statement accusing the Bush administration of "deliberately and systematically" distorting scientific fact and misleading the public in order to further its own partisan political objectives. In a damning report, the scientists detailed numerous examples of the administration's abuse of science: censoring government studies; gagging agency scientists; refusing to confer with or ignoring independent experts; appointing unqualified or industry-connected individuals to federal advisory committees; disbanding those government panels offering unwanted information; and misinterpreting information to fit predetermined policy objectives (see Appendix).

Senior Agency Officials Resign over the Administration's Policies
The Bush administration's approach to environmental protection has spurred an epidemic of resignations by career environmental officials, especially in the EPA's enforcement office. As key experts have left the agency, reports have confirmed major enforcement declines. Those departing include Bruce Buckheit, the director of air enforcement; Richard Biondi, the associate director for air enforcement; Eric Schaeffer, the director of regulatory enforcement; and Sylvia Lowrence, the acting director of the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.

Pentagon Sees Global Warming as a Security Threat
Even as the White House continues to downplay the issue, the Pentagon seems to be taking global warming seriously. Authors of a new Pentagon-commissioned report, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, conclude that global warming could pose a serious security threat, citing scenarios involving widespread droughts and famine. Uncovered by Fortune Magazine in January 2004, the report was commissioned by respected Pentagon adviser Andrew Marshall, a Rumsfeld protégé who has influenced top U.S. military thinking for more than three decades and has been termed the Pentagon's "guru of long-term threat assessment." White House sources have declined to comment on the report except to make clear that they feel no need to reevaluate their current posture of denial on global warming.

Federal Environmental Policy Hijacked by Least-Responsible U.S. Industries
Today, it is clearer than ever that U.S. environmental laws face a fundamental threat more sweeping and dangerous than any since the dawn of the modern environmental movement in 1970. What's more, this threat is now being translated into damage on the ground. After years of improvement, data indicate that the nation's water and air pollution problems are getting worse. Sewage contamination is now a major problem in lakes, rivers, and beaches around the nation, even as the administration moves to weaken basic Clean Water Act safeguards addressing the problem. Anglers in most parts of the country are confronted with health advisories against eating locally caught fish due to mercury contamination, yet the administration proposes to dilute and delay mercury pollution standards. Across the West, natural treasures belonging to all Americans are being handed over to logging, mining, and energy companies, while public input and environmental analysis are circumvented to speed the process.

The environmental excesses documented in this report reflect a system under siege. Environmental laws in the United States have been effective because they are supported by a system of federal agency safeguards, careful monitoring, credible enforcement, and decisions guided by a respect for science and data. That vital infrastructure has been undermined through weakening changes to environmental rules, enforcement relaxations, reduced funding for environmental protection, litigation deals, manipulation of science, reduced public participation, and an unprecedented shroud of secrecy surrounding government deliberations on the environment. In essence, federal environmental policy has been hijacked by the least responsible elements in U.S. industries.

Because the election season is upon us, the Bush administration and its allies among the regulated industries will seek to dismiss such criticisms as a political attack. In that regard, readers are reminded that we have been raising these serious concerns, and documenting this administration's march backward on the environment, with three annual editions of this report. This is not an extreme agenda, nor a partisan agenda. It is simply sound, long-term planning that should be embraced across the political spectrum.

Our landmark environmental laws have been among the most successful legislative initiatives of the past 50 years, improving our air, water, and quality of life in this country in myriad ways. Rather than tearing these programs down, it is time to focus again on how best to build on them to make progress on pressing problems like global warming, sprawl, and the loss of wildlife and natural

The Bush Administration's Air Pollution Plan Hurts Public Health, Helps Big Polluters, Worsens Global Warming

The Bush administration's air pollution proposal, which it has misleadingly dubbed its "Clear Skies Initiative," was introduced in Congress on Thursday, February 27. NRDC and 14 other environmental groups jointly released the following backgrounder, which shows that the administration's proposal would undermine the Clean Air Act.
The Bush administration's air pollution plan would weaken the public health protections of the current Clean Air Act. It would threaten public health and help big polluters by delaying and diluting cuts in power plants' sulfur, nitrogen and mercury pollution compared to timely enforcement of current law. It would roll back the current law's public health safeguards protecting local air quality, curbing pollution from upwind states, and restoring visibility in our national parks. Finally, it also would do nothing to curb power plants' growing emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.
Administration Plan Repeals, Weakens and Delays Clean Air Act Safeguards
Bush Plan Weakens Protection from Dangerous Soot and Smog
Current Clean Air Act: Dangerous levels of soot and smog are causing thousands of premature deaths, hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks, and other illnesses each year. The Environmental Protection Agency and states must clean up dangerous soot and smog and ensure that most citizens breathe air that meets public health standards by 2010. Current law requires deep reductions in power plants' sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions within this decade to meet these public health standards. In September 2001, EPA told the industry's main lobby group, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), that existing law would cut power plants' soot-forming SO2 pollution from 11 million tons today to 2 million tons by 2012, and cut their smog-forming NOx pollution from 5 million tons today to 1.25 million tons by 2010. (See notes and table.)
The administration plan would delay deadlines for meeting public health standards, allowing violations of soot and smog health standards to continue until 2015 or later. Power plant pollution cuts would be delayed and diluted. Tens of millions of people would be denied healthy air, even as late as 2020 and beyond.
The administration plan would allow more than twice as much SO2 for nearly a decade longer (2010-2018), compared with faithful enforcement of the current Clean Air Act. After 2018, SO2 emissions would still be one and a half times higher than if current law is enforced.
The administration plan would allow more than one and a half times as much NOx for nearly a decade longer (2010-2018) and one third more NOx than current law, even after 2018.
The full pollution reductions are likely to be further delayed, to as late as 2025, because of emissions "banking" provisions.
Bush Plan Weakens Protection from Toxic Mercury
Current Clean Air Act: Power plants are the largest uncontrolled source of mercury, a neurological toxin that threatens the health of developing fetuses, children and other vulnerable populations. Each power plant must install the maximum achievable control technology (MACT) for mercury emissions and other toxic air pollutants by the end of 2007, and then further limit any unacceptable health risks that remain. EPA told EEI in December 2001 that enforcing current law could cut power plant mercury pollution by nearly 90 percent, from 48 tons today to about 5 tons, by 2008.
The administration plan would eliminate the current law's health protections for mercury and other toxic air pollutants. Mercury reductions would be delayed and diluted. The administration plan would allow power plants to emit more than five times as much mercury for a decade longer (2010-2018) and three times as much after 2018 than current law. EPA data show that more than 100 power plants may actually increase mercury emissions, and that parts of New England, the Great Lakes and Gulf Coast regions, and other areas would experience only very small reductions in mercury deposition, and could experience increases.
Bush Plan Repeals Safeguards for Local Air Quality
The current Clean Air Act requires new power plants to install state-of-the-art pollution controls, and requires older "grandfathered" plants to install modern pollution controls when they are rebuilt or expanded in ways that increase pollution output. In areas with dirty air, new or expanded plants must offset their pollution increases.
The administration plan would effectively repeal these current air quality safeguards. Exemptions would not be limited to power plants, but would be available to plants in any industry sector.
Hamstrings Safeguards for Downwind States
Current Clean Air Act: When power plants in upwind states cause violations of air pollution health standards in downwind states, the downwind states can force those plants to cut their pollution.
The administration plan would effectively repeals this "state rights" provision. The Bush plan would prohibit downwind states from pursuing any pollution reductions from power plants in upwind states before 2012. The administration bill would increase the burden of proof after 2012, making nearly impossible to prove that upwind power plants are causing downwind pollution.
Bush Plan Weakens Safeguards for National Parks
Current Clean Air Act: Existing power plants must install modern pollution control equipment to curb the haze they cause in national parks and wilderness areas. New major industrial sources including power plants must not degrade air quality in national parks and wilderness areas.
The administration plan would repeal cleanup requirements for existing sources, and would fail to protect clean air in our parks by ignoring potential impacts on national parks in siting most new major sources of industrial pollution, including power plants.
The Administration Plan Would Worsen Global Warming
Power plants are the largest source of U.S. global warming pollution, responsible for 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. The earth's climate is rapidly changing due to the buildup of CO2 and other heat-trapping pollution. Ignoring power plants' carbon emissions will lead to more global warming and higher costs. An integrated four-pollutant bill, with mandatory limits on CO2, would begin to reduce this monumental hazard to our health and our environment and, at the same time, save billions of dollars.
The administration plan would allow power plant CO2 pollution to continue to increase, relying on voluntary approaches, which have proven to be ineffective. The administration plan would allow another generation of investments in power plants with excessive carbon dioxide emissions -- dramatically increasing future costs for utilities and their customers when the need to curb these emissions is finally recognized.

CORPORATIONS IMPACTED BY BUSH’S CLEAN AIR ACT ROLLBACK AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS

CORPORATE POLLUTERS CELEBRATE A TAX-FREE APRIL 15

So, you thought you had heard more than you could possibly tolerate about corporate tax freeloading? Think again. A new report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group shows that because Congress and the Bush Administration have decided to terminate the Superfund tax, regular taxpayers are now forced to pay 315% more to clean up corporate polluters' mess. Specifically, the Administration refused to renew a levy on corporations who do not clean up their toxic pollution. That levy went directly to the Superfund, where the federal government used it to clean up toxic sites. But now that the tax has been terminated, corporate polluters are enjoying a $4-million-a-day tax holiday. Whereas in 1995, American taxpayers were only forced to pick up $300 million of the toxic cleanup bill, now that the Superfund is bankrupt, taxpayers are forced to pay $1.27 billion a year. The Bush Administration is the first that has not collected or supported reinstating the fees in the program's 23 year history.

Dirty Air, Less Regulation

As more and more states band together to demand stricter air quality enforcement from the Bush Administration, the EPA yesterday reported, "About 159 million people, more than half the U.S. population, live in counties singled out as having dirty air or contributing to air problems in neighboring communities." While the EPA "said regions in noncompliance with the new ozone standards may have to impose new emission controls on industrial plants," the declaration was largely symbolic: The Bush Administration in 2002 gutted clean air laws to permit owners of the oldest and dirtiest power plants, oil refineries and factories to significantly increase air pollution without having to clean up. All told, the move would "allow an estimated 17,000 outdated power stations and factories" to increase their emissions with impunity. The "new source review" changes by the Administration reduced state and local government's ability to control air pollution. As the President of the American Lung Association said, that means "too many communities [will have] a way to avoid or delay cleaning up the pollution their citizens must breathe."

Senate Democrats Act to Repeal Parts of Medicare Law

Senate Democrats proposed legislation to repeal aspects of the controversial Medicare law on April 7. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who sponsored the bill, (S.2300) with 10 other Senate Democrats, cited the Medicare Trustees recent report, which found that Medicare's financial state was drastically deteriorating, as an indication that the new law was damaging the solvency of the program. Among other things, the proposed legislation would repeal the "premium support" clause that would privatize Medicare by competing directly with private insurance companies in 2010 and eliminate $12 billion in "slush fund" payments to private health insurers. "Our legislation will repeal the provisions of the bill that squander Medicare money on fattening the profits of HMOs and the insurance industry," Kennedy said.

God is not a right-wing zealot

The Rev. Albert Pennybacker is a Bible Belt preacher with a drawl who's urging people to support "basic religious values." But he's no Jerry Falwell clone.
In the heart of the Bluegrass, a Bible Belt preacher is rallying people to political action around what he calls "basic religious values." Think you can describe his politics? Think again. This man of the cloth wants "regime change" in Washington.
The Rev. Albert Pennybacker, a Lexington, Ky.-based pastor, is head of the Clergy Leadership Network, a new, cross-denominational group of liberal and moderate religious leaders seeking to counter the influence of the religious right and to mobilize voters to change leadership in Washington. Pennybacker, affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and a pastor of 35 years, is tired of the conventional wisdom that equates religiosity with conservatism. Nationwide, he says, the religious right often squeezes out the left in public debate.
The group is 1,000 members strong -- and growing.

Woodward book: Bush secretly ordered Iraq war

Associated Press

President Bush quietly ordered creation of a war plan against Iraq in November 2001 while overseeing a divided national security team, including a vice president determined to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida, says a new book.
Bob Woodward, in "Plan of Attack," says Secretary of State Colin Powell believed Vice President Dick Cheney developed -- as Woodward puts it -- an "unhealthy fixation" on trying to find a connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bush dismissed such characterizations of Cheney.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book, which will be available in bookstores next week and covers the 16 months leading to the March 2003 invasion.
Bush told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Nov. 21, 2001 -- less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan -- to prepare for possible war with Iraq, and kept some members of his closest circle in the dark, Woodward said.
In an interview with the author, Bush said he feared that if news had gotten out about the Iraq plan as America was fighting another conflict, that would cause "enormous international angst and domestic speculation."
"I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq," Bush is quoted as saying. "It was such a high-stakes moment and ... it would look like that I was anxious to go to war. And I'm not anxious to go to war."
Asked Friday about that Nov. 21, 2001, meeting with Rumsfeld, the president said, "I can't remember dates that far back" but emphasized "it was Afghanistan that was on my mind and I didn't really start focusing on Iraq 'til later on."
The White House later confirmed the discussion with Rumsfeld but said it did not mean Bush was set on a course of attacking Iraq at that point.
Bush and his aides have denied they were preoccupied with Iraq at the cost of paying attention to the al-Qaida terrorist threat before the Sept. 11 attacks. A commission investigating the attacks just concluded several weeks of extraordinary public testimony, during which former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke contended the Bush administration's determination to invade Iraq undermined the war on terror.
Woodward's account indicates some members of the administration, particularly Cheney, were focused on Saddam from the outset of Bush's presidency and even after the terrorist attacks made the destruction of al-Qaida the top priority.
Without quoting them directly on the subject, Woodward portrays Cheney and Powell as barely on speaking terms -- the vice president being the chief advocate for a war that the secretary of state was not sure needed to be fought.
He recounts the vice president and a defense official making remarks to others about Powell bragging about his popularity, and Powell saying Cheney was preoccupied with an Iraq-al-Qaida link.
"Powell thought Cheney had the fever," Woodward writes. "He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. ... Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation."
On the war's origins, the book describes Bush pulling Rumsfeld into a cubbyhole office adjacent to the Situation Room for that November 2001 meeting and asking him what shape the Iraq war plan was in. When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush ordered a fresh one.
The book says Bush told Rumsfeld to keep quiet about their planning and when the defense secretary asked to bring CIA Director George Tenet into it at some point, the president said not to do so yet.
Even Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was apparently not fully briefed. Woodward said Bush told her that morning he was having Rumsfeld work on Iraq but did not give details.
The book says Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of Central Command, uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict.
Woodward, a Washington Post journalist who wrote an earlier book on Bush's anti-terrorism campaign and broke the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, says the scope and intensity of the war plan grew even as administration officials were saying publicly that they were pursuing a diplomatic solution.
The book describes a CIA briefing for Bush in December 2002 presenting evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Bush was not sure the public would find the information compelling, Woodward said, but when he turned to Tenet, the CIA chief assured him: "It's a slam-dunk case."
That case fell apart after U.S. forces occupied Iraq and failed to find the stockpiles the administration said had been there.

Bush Nominates, Appoints 24 to Various Posts

Reuters

President Bush nominated or appointed 24 people to various posts on Friday.
Bush used the presidential power to appoint four nominees while Congress is in recess -- something that has infuriated Democrats, especially when it involves judges.
In this case, Bush is promoting four men and women to federal positions including undersecretary of education Eugene Hickok to become Deputy Secretary of Education.
Edward McPherson, now chief financial officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was recess-appointed to replace Hickok as undersecretary.
Other recess appointments include Linda Morrison Combs to be an Assistant Secretary of Transportation and Linda Mysliwy Conlin to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
In 2002, Bush angered the Senate when he made the recess appointment of Gerald Reynolds to become head of the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education.
The White House said Bush had also nominated Thomas Fingar to be Assistant Secretary of State for intelligence and research. Fingar is now Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.
Other nominations include: Anne Patterson as deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations; Suzanne Hale as ambassador to Micronesia; Constance Berry Newman to the board of directors of the African Development Foundation; and William Brewer to the National Veterans Business Development Corp.
Bush also named six people to the policy committee of the White House Conference on Aging and nine to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Twice this year, Bush has bypassed the Senate on judicial nominations. In February, he installed Alabama Attorney General William Pryor on an Atlanta appeals court. He also used the recess procedure to name Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Both Pryor and Pickering had previously been blocked by Democrats who accused them of being too conservative and out of step with the views of mainstream Americans.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle has vowed to block all of Bush's juridicial nominees until the president promises to stop seating federal judges while the Senate is on recess.

"Incurious George"

Reuters

"Incurious," a rarely used word, is making a curious comeback as pundits dust it off to describe President George W. Bush's alleged lack of curiosity about intelligence reports prior to September 11, 2001, according to a California language expert.
Paul JJ Payack, founder of the Global Language Monitor, which tracks word usage on the Web and elsewhere, said that since he first spotted it used in a March Time Magazine report, it had appeared some 5,000 times, jumping about 1,000 uses after the New York Times lead editorial on Thursday was headlined "The Price of Incuriosity."
"Americans knew George W. Bush was incurious man when they elected him, but the hearings of the 9/11 commission, which turned yesterday (Wednesday) from the F.B.I.'s fecklessness to the C.I.A.'s blurred vision, have brought that fact home in a startling way," the Times said.
The Times then went on to criticise the president for not seeming to show enough curiosity about a CIA briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
Other newspapers and several columnists have also used "incurious," a word Payack says made its first appearance in the 16th century, to describe the president.
Part of the reason may lie in its having a punning quality -- calling the president "Incurious George" in headlines, as some Web articles have, conjures up visions of the popular children's book monkey "Curious George."
Payack said the term "incuriosity' has rocketed to the top of the Global Language Monitor's PQ (Political-sensitivity Quotient) Index, which is an algorithm that tracks politically sensitive words and phrases in the media and on the Internet.
"Incuriosity" is followed by "Quagmire," "Two Americas," "Global Outsourcing" and 'War for Oil" on the Global Monitor list of most popular current political phrases, he said.
He added that "Quagmire," which came into vogue to describe
the Vietnam war, now is being applied almost to Iraq in hundreds of thousands of uses.

Warnings ignored, says retired commander of the U.S. Central Command

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni wondered aloud yesterday how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be caught off guard by the chaos in Iraq that has killed nearly 100 Americans in recent weeks and led to his announcement that 20,000 U.S. troops would be staying there instead of returning home as planned.
"I'm surprised that he is surprised because there was a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to be thus," said Zinni, a Marine for 39 years and the former commander of the U.S. Central Command. "Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?"
At a Pentagon news briefing yesterday, Rumsfeld said he could not have estimated how many troops would be killed in the past week.
Zinni made his comments during an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune before giving a speech last night at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice as part of its distinguished lecturer series.
For years Zinni said he cautioned U.S. officials that an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would likely be more dangerous to U.S. interests than one with him because of the ethnic and religious clashes that would be unleashed.
"I think that some heads should roll over Iraq," Zinni said. "I think the president got some bad advice."
Known as the "Warrior Diplomat," Zinni is not a peace activist by nature or training, having led troops in Vietnam, commanded rescue operations in Somalia and directed strikes against Iraq and al Qaeda.
He once commanded the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.
Out of uniform, Zinni was a troubleshooter for the U.S. government in Africa, Asia and Europe and served as special envoy to the Middle East under the Bush administration for a time before his reservations over the Iraq war and its aftermath caused him to resign and oppose it.
Not even Zinni's resumé could shield him from the accusations that followed.
"I've been called a traitor and a turncoat for mentioning these things," said Zinni, 60. The problems in Iraq are being caused, he said, by poor planning and shortsightedness, such as disbanding the Iraqi army and being unable to provide security.
Zinni said the United States must now rely on the U.N. to pull its "chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq."
"We're betting on the U.N., who we blew off and ridiculed during the run-up to the war," Zinni said. "Now we're back with hat in hand. It would be funny if not for the lives lost."
Several things have to happen to get Iraq back on course, whether the U.N. decides to step in or not, Zinni said.
Improving security for American forces and the Iraqi people is at the top of the list followed closely by helping the working class with economic projects.
But it's not the lack of a comprehensive American plan for Iraq nor the surging violence that has cost allied troops their lives – including about 30 Camp Pendleton Marines – that most concerns Zinni.
"In the end, the Iraqis themselves have to want to rebuild their country more than we do," Zinni said. "But I don't see that right now. I see us doing everything.
"I spent two years in Vietnam, and I've seen this movie before," he said. "They have to be willing to do more or else it is never going to work."
Last night at the Kroc institute during his speech "From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table: Preventing Deadly Conflict," Zinni detailed the approach he believes the United States should take in the Middle East.
He told an overflow crowd that the United States tries to grapple with individual issues in Middle East instead of seeing them as elements of a broader question.
"We need to step back and get a grand strategy," he said.
For years Zinni said he cautioned U.S. officials that an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would likely be more dangerous to U.S. interests than one with him because of the ethnic and religious clashes that would be unleashed.

Citing His Vietnam Service, Kerry Assails Cheney, Rove

WASHINGTON POST

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said Friday that he is tired of having his commitment to national security questioned by Republicans who never served in the military. He singled out Vice President Cheney and White House senior adviser Karl Rove by name, saying they "went out of their way to avoid" service during the Vietnam War.
In unusually pointed and personal language, Kerry condemned his rivals, who are airing a television commercial that questions the judgment of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on national security issues and attacks him for voting against the $87 billion authorization funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I'm tired of these Republicans who spend so much time denigrating Democrats and other people's commitment to the defense of our nation," Kerry said at a rally on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. "I'm tired of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and a bunch of people who went out of their way to avoid their chance to serve when they had the chance. I went [to Vietnam]. I'm not going listen to them talk to me about patriotism."
Kerry's attack on Cheney and Rove triggered another heated exchange between the two campaigns as Republicans publicly rebutted, and privately seethed over, the Massachusetts senator's remarks. Both sides accused the other of hypocrisy over an issue that continues to take center stage in the presidential campaign. This was not the first time Kerry has lashed out in this way at Republicans for challenging critics of Bush's war policy. But he went further by singling out Cheney and Rove.
Kerry, a decorated combat veteran in Vietnam, accused the White House of a "twisted sense of ethics and morality" for past political attacks on Vietnam veterans Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was a prisoner of war, and former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), who lost an arm and two legs in Vietnam. He added, "They don't think twice about trying to pretend to America that I somehow don't care about the defense of our nation."
With two huge American flags framing the rally site, Kerry said he had fought under and seen the flag "draped over the coffins of friends." He closed by saying: "The political bombs may be bursting around us as they try to distort the truth. But when I look up, that flag is still there and it belongs to all Americans, not to them, not to a party, it belongs to us, and we are going to march forward and reclaim the democracy of our country."
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry's attacks were misguided and outrageous. "Nobody has ever questioned his patriotism," Schmidt said. "What's in question is John Kerry's judgment. Yesterday, Osama bin Laden again threatened America and John Kerry said the terrorist threat was exaggerated. John Kerry voted for the Iraq war but voted against money for American troops in harm's way. What's at issue is John Kerry's troubling record."
Neither Cheney nor Rove served in the military. Cheney received student deferments and later a deferment as a new father during the Vietnam War.
According to the Bush campaign, Rove drew the number 84 in the draft lottery when he graduated from high school in 1969 and received a student deferment upon enrolling at the University of Utah that fall. In the fall of 1971, after transferring to the University of Maryland, he was notified by his draft board in Salt Lake City that his student deferment had been revoked. Rove then was put into the extended priority status, which Schmidt said made him among the first eligible to be called in early 1972, but he was not called.

FBI Warrant Requests Up 85 Percent

CBS NEWS

The number of secret surveillance warrants sought by the FBI has increased 85 percent in the past three years, a pace that has outstripped the Justice Department's ability to quickly process them.
Even after warrants are approved, the FBI often does not have enough agents or other personnel with the expertise to conduct the surveillance. The FBI still is trying to build a cadre of translators who can understand conversations that are intercepted in such languages as Arabic, Pashto and Farsi.
These findings are among those of investigators for the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, which has harshly criticized the intelligence-gathering efforts of the CIA and FBI.
FBI and Justice Department officials said Thursday they are working to address all three issues, which limit the government's ability to gather the kind of intelligence needed to head off another catastrophic terrorist attack.
The warrants, authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allow for wiretaps, video surveillance, property searches and other spying on people believed to be terrorists or spies. After the 2001 Patriot Act and a key 2002 court decision crumbled the legal wall separating the FBI's criminal and intelligence investigations, use of FISA warrants has soared as sharing of information has become easier.
Since 2001, the number of warrants has risen from 934 to more than 1,700 in 2003, according to the FBI. The FBI adopted streamlined procedures to move the warrant requests quickly from the field offices to headquarters after Sept. 11.
But a Sept. 11 commission report released this week found that the Justice Department approval process "continues to be long and slow" and that the mounting requests "are overwhelming the ability of the system to process them." Although there are provisions for the attorney general to issue emergency FISA warrants, these are good for only 72 hours before they must be reviewed by a special court.
The department and FBI are "attempting to address bottlenecks" in the system, the commission report found, but the difficulties suggest that some surveillance opportunities could be delayed or lost.
Attorney General John Ashcroft is issuing new guidelines for the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which handles FISA requests, spokesman Mark Corallo said. The changes are aimed at reducing and preventing backlogs, he said.
"We have been in a constant state of revising and streamlining the FISA process," Corallo said. More lawyers are being added to the unit so the warrant requests are more quickly reviewed and sent to the court for approval.
The inability to gather enough evidence for a FISA warrant caused the FBI problems in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. He was taken into custody on immigration charges in August 2001 after his desire to learn to fly a Boeing 747 with little flight background aroused suspicions.
The FBI turned to the CIA to help produce evidence needed to show that Moussaoui might be connected to a foreign terrorist group, which would enable agents to get a FISA warrant to search Moussaoui's computer. That led to an Aug. 23-24 briefing memo to CIA Director George Tenet headlined "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly," but nothing was done before the 19 hijackers completed the Sept. 11 plot that took nearly 3,000 lives.
The commission said it is possible that if the government had acted more quickly on the information involving Moussaoui it could have led authorities to the hijackers.
Some lawmakers and privacy activists worry that FISA remains ripe for abuse. Legislation introduced on Capitol Hill would require the Justice Department to publicly account for the number of Americans subjected to FISA surveillance and how often it is used in criminal cases.
"What it will do is go a long way toward assuaging growing public mistrust of the government," said Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Even if the FISA delays are solved, the FBI is struggling to provide the surveillance experts necessary to carry out the warrants. The commission staff found shortages at every FBI field office they visited and noted that some of these personnel "are not treated as part of an integrated intelligence program" and do not meet regularly with case agents working terrorism suspects.
The FBI has two main surveillance programs: the Special Surveillance Group, made up of non-agents who monitor foreign agents, spies and others not targets of a criminal investigation; and the Special Operations Group, made up of agents who deal with dangerous people such as terrorists or organized crime figures.
Both types of surveillance are extremely labor-intensive, requiring personnel to work in shifts for round-the-clock coverage of the target. They also must handle other types of criminal cases, including those involving the Mafia, public corruption and violent street gangs.
In his testimony to the commission, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the FBI has requested money from Congress for additional surveillance capabilities to meet the growing demand. And he said that while the FBI still faces a shortage of translators, any counterterrorism intercept deemed important is reviewed by a language expert within 24 hours.

Bush Pushes Renewal of Patriot Act

Reuters

President Bush on Saturday urged the U.S. Congress to renew the Patriot Act, the post-Sept. 11, 2001 law that beefs up law enforcement powers, as he sought to highlight his national security credentials.
The president sees his pledge to keep America safe as a cornerstone of his argument for re-election, but his image as a leader on fighting terror took a hit amid recent public hearings by the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks.
The actions of the president and some of his advisers have been called into question by critics such as his ex-counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who accused Bush of ignoring warnings.
"Key elements of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Some politicians in Washington act as if the threat to America will also expire on that schedule."
Although it was supported by a large majority of lawmakers when it came up for a vote in Congress in the weeks after the attacks, the Patriot Act has become controversial.
Opponents fear it may give federal agents too much power, for example to invade privacy with provisions such as those that make it easier to tap telephone conversations.
But the president accused those who would allow the law to lapse of having "willful blindness" to the terrorist threat.
The comment appeared to be an attack on Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee who will challenge Bush in the November election.
Kerry voted for the Patriot Act. However, he has since been critical of it, saying there is a danger that the new powers for law enforcement will be abused by the Bush administration.
Bush will try to hammer home his message on national security next week, with speeches about the Patriot Act on Monday in Pennsylvania and Tuesday in Buffalo, New York.

Bush Attempting to Replace U.S. Archivist

Concern is growing within the archival and historical communities regarding the Bush administration's hoped for "fast-track" process to replace Archivist of the United States John Carlin with one of its own choosing -- historian Allen Weinstein. According to informed sources, the administration hopes to short-circuit the normal confirmation process and see Weinstein confirmed through an "expedited" process. Their goal
-- place Weinstein in the position prior to the November election.
According to Hill insiders, the effort to replace Carlin is coming from the highest levels of the White House. Reportedly, Karl Rove who is widely viewed as one of the president's chief political advisors, if not his political mastermind and, Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, want their own archivist in place for two overarching reasons: first, because of the sensitive nature of certain presidential and executive department records likely to be opened in the near future, and second, because there is genuine concern in the White House that the president may not be re-elected.
Though it is not widely known, in January 2005, the first batch of records (the mandatory 12 years of closure having passed) relating to the president's father's administration will be subject to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and could be opened. Another area of concern to presidential officials relates to the 9-11 Commission records. Because there is no mandatory 30-year closure rule (except for highly classified White House and Executive Department records and documents), all materials relating to the commission are scheduled to be transferred to the National Archives upon termination of the Commission later this year. These records could be made available to researchers and journalists as soon as they are processed by NARA.
In what appears to be a calculated move by administration officials, Rove and Gonzales have advanced the nomination of Weinstein fully aware that according to the "National Archives and Records Administration Act of 1984 (P.L. 98-497) the Archivist of the United States position is to be an appointment based "without regard to political affiliations and solely on the basis of the professional qualifications required to perform the duties and responsibilities of the office of the Archivist." If Weinstein is confirmed and if President Bush is not elected, then President Kerry could be accused of "politicizing" the position should he try to replace Weinstein. In fact, though, the president's strategy in seeking to replace Carlin at this time rather than later injects an element of partisanship that could give John Kerry, should he be elected president in November, ample justification to replace Weinstein in the same manner that the White House is seeking to replace Carlin.
Carlin has made it widely known that he anticipated stepping down from the Archivist position in July 2005, upon his 65th birthday, upon the tenth anniversary of his appointment to the position, and upon the completion of his ten-year strategic plan for NARA. His intention not to step down until then has been stated in several public interviews including (reportedly), in a recent interview with CNN's Brian Lamb (26 November 2003 broadcast of "National Journal"). Months back, recognizing that Carlin intended to step down next year, archival organizations had begun to pull together qualification statements and a "highly qualified" list of names for the White House to consider in finding Carlin's replacement. What appeared to be an orderly procedure to pass power from Carlin to a new archivist in summer 2005 has now been short-circuited.
There are two basic ways for the Archivist of the United States to be replaced -- resignation or replacement by the President. In his letter to NARA employees last week (see "Historian Allen Weinstein Slotted by Bush Administration to be Next Archivist of the United States" in NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE, Vol 10, #15 8 April 2004) Carlin stated that he was not resigning and he would not submit his resignation until a new archivist is appointed. There is no indication that the White House has any cause-related reason to replace Carlin and no reason was communicated to Congress when Weinstein's nomination was advanced formally last week. Some observers speculate that by refusing to resign until a new archivist is in place, Carlin is tacitly protesting what Hill insiders consider his "premature" removal.
If Carlin (a Democrat appointed by Bill Clinton) had resigned outright, the decks would have been cleared for the White House to promptly replace him.
However, that did not happen. It appears that the White House does not want any adverse publicity that would be generated by officially coming up with a "reason" for communicating to Congress its desire to replace Carlin as required by law ("the President shall communicate the reasons for any such removal to each House of the Congress"). Hence, by advancing Weinstein's nomination (which was received by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on 8 April) and by securing Weinstein's confirmation, the White House can then quietly force Carlin's resignation.
Owing to the controversy surrounding the anticipated resignation of Carlin, historians and archivists are calling for these and other issues to be addressed in Weinstein's confirmation hearing. To that end, some historical and archival organizations believe that John Carlin should also be invited to testify under oath regarding the pressure he is under and what he knows about his "premature" resignation. Governmental Affairs Committee staff, however, report that such a move would almost be unprecedented in a confirmation hearing.
On 14 April 2004, archival, historical, and other governmental watchdog organizations concerned both the politicization of the appointment process and the qualifications of the nominee, issued a "statement" calling for the Senate to conduct a confirmation hearing consistent with other positions of importance requiring Senate confirmation. The statement drafted by the Society of American Archivists and issued on behalf of several archival and historical organizations (see http://www.archivists.org/statements/weinstein.asp ) raises a concern about "the sudden announcement on April 8, 2004, that the White House has nominated Allen Weinstein to become the next Archivist of the United States."
According to the statement that has the endorsement of the Society of American Archivists, the Association of Research Libraries, Council of State Historical Records Coordinators, Northwest Archivists, Inc., the Association of Documentary Editors, Midwest Archives Conference, the American Association for State and Local History, and the Organization of American Historians: "Prior to the announcement, there was no consultation with professional organizations of archivists or historians. This is the first time since 1985 that the process of nominating an Archivist of the United States has not been open for public discussion and input. We believe that Professor Weinstein must -- through appropriate and public discussions and hearings -- demonstrate his ability to meet the criteria that will qualify him to serve as Archivist of the United States....the decision to appoint a new Archivist should be considered in accordance with both the letter and the spirit of the 1984 law."
The statement also calls on the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs "to schedule open hearings on this nomination in order to explore more fully 1) the reasons why the Archivist is being replaced, and 2) Professor Weinstein's qualifications to become Archivist of the United States."
Now that the nomination of Allen Weinstein has been officially advanced to the Senate for confirmation, historians and archivists are scrambling to learn more about the president's nominee.
Allen Weinstein possesses both strong Republican political connections and scholarly qualifications. In the past he has served as a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lugar has worked with Weinstein for years in promoting democracy across the globe. According to the senator, Weinstein "always has had a keen understanding and perspective of the complexities of democratic societies, qualities that will serve him well as head of the agency that preserves the nation's most important documents." (For Weinstein's official bio, tap into http://www.centerfordemocracy.org/awbio.html ).
But outside the world of Republican political activists and a small circle of historians of espionage, Weinstein is not very well known by many academics. Also, he is a virtual unknown to archivists. Though he possesses fine academic training and qualifications, Weinstein has not been a member of either the Organization of American Historians or the American Historical Association for years, essentially since his career turned to that of being an activist in the field of foreign relations and international service.
Several historians and journalists familiar with Weinstein's scholarly and popular writings (especially relating to the contentious Alger Hiss case) and career have started to express their views on the nominee privately and publicly. His nomination has been characterized by former National Security Archive founder and director Scott Armstrong as "the most cynical appointment of an Archivist possible. He [Weinstein] has a very clouded, very complicated, self-promoting, neo-con, politically manipulative record....While he uses historical documentation in his work, he is very selective in his use."
Much of the controversy on Weinstein's work relates to the disposition of his research notes and his research methods relating to his "Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case" (1978, rev. 1998) and a more recent work, "The Haunted
Wood" (1999). His book on the Alger Hiss case is considered in many
circles as definitive. Because Weinstein concluded that Alger Hiss was Soviet spy, he earned the wrath of Hiss's defenders (including Victor Navasky publisher of The Nation), but, at the same time, Weinstein found himself embraced by conservatives for the same reasons. "Perjury" served as his entree into the world of conservative causes and financing which Weinstein has tapped throughout the years to help underwrite his various projects. (For interesting reading focusing on the records-related issues regarding "Perjury," tap into:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=19971103&s=navasky and http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010716&c=1&s=navasky ).
More controversial questions arise out of a more recent study in which allegedly Weinstein (or his publisher) paid a fee to the KGB for "exclusive access" to documents that no other historians have been able to see relating to Soviet espionage in America. Historian Ellen Schrecker writes about Weinstein's role in the payment to the KGB (in possible violation of Russian law) that resulted in the crafting of "The Haunted Wood"
co-authored by Weinstein and former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev (For more on this controversial issue, tap into:
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=19990524&s=schrecker
). Schrecker notes "this sort of research is not the kind that inspires confidence within the scholarly community" and it raises "ethical questions." (See also other recent postings on the History News Network by British economist-historian Roger Sandilands: http://hnn.us/articles/printfriendly/4604.html and The Nation lead editorial, "The Haunted Archives" at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040503&s=editors ).
In addition to professional historians' concern about Weinstein's research methods and attitudes about access to records, Weinstein has yet to establish his credentials in the realm of archival management. Consequently, archivists have begun to compile a series of questions that Weinstein will be asked to respond to.
In the statement issued 14 April (see related story above) archivists have expressed a desire to learn more about Weinstein's "knowledge and understanding of the critical issues confronting NARA and the archival profession generally, especially the challenges of information technology, and the competing demands of public access to government records, privacy, homeland security, and ensuring the authenticity and integrity of all records." To that end, archivists wondered how Weinstein believes NARA "should balance competing interests for protecting sensitive or confidential information with those seeking to gain access to records created by government agencies; ideas for continuing essential programs as well as important new archival initiatives, such as the Electronic Records Archives project; his thoughts on fully supporting the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) whose grants help to raise the level of archival practice at state and local levels," and his "experience and demonstrated ability to lead and manage a large government agency such as NARA."
No doubt in the weeks ahead, answers to these and other questions stand to make this nomination controversial both in terms of the politicization of the office of Archivist of the United States and with respect to the nominee's specific qualifications. Hopefully, answers will come when the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee holds confirmation hearings that have yet to be scheduled.

Pre-9/11 Files Show Warnings Were More Dire and Persistent

NEW YORK TIMES

Early this year, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks played four minutes of a call from Betty Ong, a crew member on American Airlines Flight 11. The power of her call could not have been plainer: in a calm voice, Ms. Ong told her supervisors about the hijacking, the weapons the attackers had used, the locations of their seats.
At first, however, Ms. Ong's reports were greeted skeptically by some officials on the ground. "They did not believe her," said Bob Kerrey, a commission member. "They said, `Are you sure?' They asked her to confirm that it wasn't air-rage. Our people on the ground were not prepared for a hijacking."
For most Americans, the disbelief was the same. The attacks of Sept. 11 seemed to come in a stunning burst from nowhere. But now, after three weeks of extraordinary public hearings and a dozen detailed reports, the lengthy documentary record makes clear that predictions of an attack by Al Qaeda had been communicated directly to the highest levels of the government.
The threat reports were more clear, urgent and persistent than was previously known. Some focused on Al Qaeda's plans to use commercial aircraft as weapons. Others stated that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking on United States soil. Many were passed to the Federal Aviation Administration.
While some of the intelligence went back years, other warnings — including one that Al Qaeda seemed interested in hijacking a plane inside this country — had been delivered to the president on Aug. 6, 2001, just a month before the attacks.
The new information produced by the commission so far has led 6 of its 10 members to say or suggest that the attacks could have been prevented, though there is no consensus on when, how or by whom. The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, has described failures at every level of government, any of which, if avoided, could have altered the outcome. Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat, said, "My conclusion is that it could have been prevented. That was not my conclusion when I went on the commission."
While the commission was created to diagnose mistakes and to recommend reforms, its examination has powerful political resonance. The panel has reviewed the records of two presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush, who is in the midst of a campaign for re-election, said last Sunday that none of the warnings gave any hint of the time, place or date of an assault. "Had I known there was going to be an attack on America I would have moved mountains to stop the attack," he said.
In an intense stretch this month, the commission pried open some of the most closely guarded compartments of government, revealing the flow and details of previously classified information given to two presidents and their senior advisers, and the performance of intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The inquiry has gone beyond the report of a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committee in 2002, which chronicled missteps at the mid-level of bureaucracies. Urged on by a number of families of people killed in the attacks, the Kean commission has used a mix of moral and political leverage to extract presidential communications and testimony. Among the new themes that have fundamentally reshaped the story of the Sept. 11 attacks are:
¶Al Qaeda and its leader, Mr. bin Laden, did not blindside the United States, but were a threat recognized and discussed regularly at the highest levels of government for nearly five years before the attacks, in thousands of reports, often accompanied by urgent warnings from lower-level experts.
¶Presidents Clinton and Bush received regular information about the threat of Al Qaeda and the intention of the bin Laden network to strike inside the United States. Each president made terrorism a stated priority, failed to find a diplomatic solution and viewed military force as a last resort. At the same time, neither grappled with the structural flaws and paralyzing dysfunction that undermined the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., the two agencies on which the nation depended for protection from terrorists. By the end of his second term, Mr. Clinton and the director of the F.B.I., Louis J. Freeh, were barely speaking.
¶Even when the two agencies cooperated, the results were unimpressive. Mr. Kean said that he viewed the reports on the two agencies as indictments. In late August 2001, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, learned that the F.B.I. had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui after he had enrolled in a flight school. Mr. Tenet was given a memorandum titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." But he testified that he took no action and did not tell President Bush about the case.
During the Clinton years, particularly at the National Security Council, the commission has found, there was uncertainty about whether the threat posed by Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden justified military action. Much of the debate was provoked by Richard A. Clarke, who led antiterrorism efforts under both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush and argued for aggressive action.
"Former officials, including an N.S.C. staffer working for Mr. Clarke, told us the threat was seen as one that could cause hundreds of casualties, not thousands," according to one interim commission report. "Such differences affect calculations about whether or how to go to war. Even officials who acknowledge a vital threat intellectually may not be ready to act upon such beliefs at great cost or at high risk."
In the first eight months of the Bush administration, the commission found, the president and his advisers received far more information, much of it dire in tone and detailed in content, than had been generally understood.
The most striking came in the Aug. 6 memorandum presented in an intelligence briefing the White House says Mr. Bush requested. Titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," the memorandum was declassified this month under pressure from the commission. After referring to a British tip in 1998 that Islamic fundamentalists wanted to hijack a plane, it went on to warn: "Nevertheless, F.B.I. information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." Mr. Bush has said the briefing did not provide specific details of when and where an attack might take place.
Mr. Kerrey said that Mr. Bush showed "good instincts" by asking for the material, but said the call from Ms. Ong, the flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 — which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in the day's first attack — showed that the threats and alarms did not get passed down the line.
"I don't see any evidence that our airports were on heightened alert," he said. "A hijacking was not a bolt out of the blue."
The Clinton Response: A Growing Priority, Hamstrung by Process
Throughout President Clinton's eight years in office, law enforcement and intelligence agencies tracked Al Qaeda through a succession of plots in the United States and overseas. The commission found new evidence that counterterrorism became a priority for the Clinton national security team. But the panel said the effort was stymied by bureaucratic miscommunications, diplomatic failures, intelligence lapses and policy miscalculations.
On the intelligence side, the commission discovered confusion about crucial issues. White House aides believed, for example, that President Clinton had authorized actions to kill Mr. bin Laden, but C.I.A. officers thought they were legally permitted to kill him only during an attempt to capture him.
Throughout the 1990's, the panel found, law enforcement and intelligence experts, often in lower-level jobs, repeatedly warned that Mr. bin Laden wanted to strike inside the United States. The threat was plainly stated in documents disclosed by the commission. One, in 1998, was titled "Bin Laden Threatening to Attack U.S. Aircraft," and cited the possibility of a strike using antiaircraft missiles. Another 1998 report, referring to Mr. bin Laden as "UBL," said, "UBL Plans for Reprisals Against U.S. Targets, Possibly in U.S." A 1996 review of a plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific uncovered evidence of the Qaeda interest in crashing a hijacked plane into C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.
But the C.I.A.'s efforts to thwart Mr. bin Laden's network through covert action were ineffectual, the commission found. The agency's "Issue Station," which was set up in 1996 to hunt down Mr. bin Laden, had a half-dozen chances to attack the Qaeda chief, but each time agency higher-ups balked. A plan to kill him in February 1999 was called off at the last minute because of concerns that he might be with a prince from the United Arab Emirates, regarded as a useful ally in counterterrorism, the commission reported.
President Clinton tried diplomacy, but that too failed. In 1998, Mr. bin Laden issued a public call for any Muslim to kill any American anywhere in the world. That April, Bill Richardson, the United States representative to the United Nations, went to Afghanistan and asked the Taliban government to surrender Mr. bin Laden to the United States.
Simultaneous Qaeda bombings in August 1998 at American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania galvanized talk of aggressive efforts, but brought no tangible results. President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in the Sudan. The missiles hit their intended targets, but neither Mr. bin Laden nor any other terrorist leader was killed.
In December 1998, Mr. Tenet announced in a memorandm to his senior staff at the C.I.A. that they would henceforth be at war with Al Qaeda. "I want no resources or people spared," he wrote.
In practice, the commission concluded, Mr. Tenet's declaration of war, which the C.I.A. director has frequently cited in his public testimony since the attacks, had "little overall effect."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the country's other principal counterterrorism agency, struggled to repackage the tools of an interstate crime-fighting organization against a highly unconventional foreign-based threat to the United States.
One interim panel report described the F.B.I. as a bureaucracy suffocated by outmoded rules and legal barriers that barred criminal investigators from obtaining intelligence data. Agents worked on an aging computer system that kept them from knowing what other agents in their own offices, much less those around the country, were working on. Some F.B.I. analysts hired to assess terror threats were assigned to jobs entering data and answering telephones.
Throughout the 1990's, the bureau focused on investigations of specific terror attacks to bring criminal cases to court. The most successful were handled by its New York office, whose agents were among the most knowledgeable in the world about Al Qaeda.
By late in the decade, the F.B.I. recognized the need to improve its intelligence collection and analysis, but the report said that Mr. Freeh had difficulty reconciling that with its continuing agenda, including the war on drugs. As a result, the bureau's counterterrorism staff was thin. On Sept. 11, 2001, only about 6 percent of the F.B.I.'s agent work force was assigned to terrorism.
In October 2000, two Qaeda suicide bombers in a small boat packed with explosives attacked the Navy destroyer Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 American sailors. President Clinton did not retaliate, but Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, warned his successor, Condoleezza Rice, that "she would be spending more time on terrorism and Al Qaeda than any other issue."
The Bush Review: Alerts, but Breaks in Chain of Command
Warned of the Qaeda threat during the transition, President Bush's national security team started work in March 2001 on a comprehensive strategy to eradicate the terror network. But the effort seemed to plod ahead almost in isolation from the urgent notices by the C.I.A. Most of the threat warnings, but not all, pointed overseas.
At the end of May, Cofer Black, chief of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism center, told Ms. Rice that the threat level stood at "7 on a scale of 10, as compared to an 8 during the millennium," the period around January 2000. In response, American embassies were warned to take precautions. The State Department warned Americans traveling overseas. The C.I.A. intensified operations to disrupt terror cells around the world.
Mr. Tenet took his terror warnings directly to Mr. Bush. Ms. Rice said that at least 40 meetings between the C.I.A. director and the president dealt "in one way or other with Al Qaeda or the Al Qaeda threat." Mr. Tenet later said "the system was blinking red," adding that no warning indicated that terrorists would fly hijacked commercial aircraft into buildings in the United States.
On July 5, Ms. Rice and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, asked Mr. Clarke to alert top officials of the country's domestic agencies. "Let's make sure they're buttoning down," Ms. Rice said. The F.A.A. issued threat advisories, but neither the agency's top administrator nor Norman Y. Mineta, the secretary of transportation, was aware of the increased threat level, said Jamie S. Gorelick, a commission member, at a hearing last week.
On July 27, Mr. Clarke informed Ms. Rice that the threat reporting had dropped. But White House officials said that Mr. Bush continued to ask about any evidence of a domestic attack. In August, C.I.A. officials prepared a briefing about the possibility of Qaeda operations inside the United States, including the use of aircraft in terror attacks.
The briefing paper was presented to Mr. Bush on Aug. 6 at his Texas ranch. The memorandum, declassified on April 10 by the White House at the commission's request, included some ominous information. It said that Qaeda operatives had been in the United States for years, might be planning an attack in the United States and could be focusing on a building in Lower Manhattan as a target.
Mr. Bush said the Aug. 6 report was not specific enough to order new actions. "I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America at a time and place, an attack. Of course I knew that America was hated by Osama bin Laden. That was obvious. The question was, who was going to attack us, when and where and with what?"
The president noted that the memo said the F.B.I. had 70 investigations under way related to Al Qaeda. In addition, the F.B.I. had sent messages to its field offices urging agents to be vigilant. Thomas J. Pickard, the F.B.I.'s acting director from June to August, said he telephoned top agents to advise them of the threat. But the commission found that most F.B.I. personnel "did not recall a heightened sense of threat from Al Qaeda."
The commission found several previously undisclosed intelligence reports to Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and national security aides dating back to April and May, when the volume of warnings began to increase. Mr. Bush was given briefing papers headlined, "Bin Laden Planning Multiple Operations," "Bin Laden Threats Are Real" and "Bin Laden's Plans Advancing."
In August 2001, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. came as close as the government ever did to detecting anyone connected to the Sept. 11 plot. That month investigators finally made progress in the fractured effort to track down two men, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, who on Sept. 11 were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
The C.I.A. had investigated the pair off and on since they had been seen at a Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000. But they were not placed on a State Department watch list until Aug. 23, after they already were in the United States. Moreover, the C.I.A. failed to tell the F.B.I.'s primary investigators on the Cole case of a key connection between the two men and a Cole suspect until after Sept. 11. "No one apparently felt they needed to inform higher level of management in either the F.B.I. or C.I.A. about the case," one commission report said.
In mid-August, after the arrest of Mr. Moussaoui in Minneapolis, the commission disclosed, Mr. Tenet and his top deputies were sent a briefing paper labeled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." But they took no action on the report.
The commission found several missed opportunities in the Moussaoui investigation that might have detected his connection to a Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, that planned the Sept. 11 attacks. "A maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui could conceivably have unearthed his connections to the Hamburg cell," one commission report said. The report added that publicity about Mr. Moussaoui's arrest "might have disrupted the plot. But such an effort would have been a race against time."
It was not until Sept. 10 that Mr. Bush's national security aides approved a three-phase strategy to eliminate Al Qaeda. The plan, which was to unfold over three to five years, envisioned a mission to the Taliban in Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was based; increased diplomatic pressure; and covert action. Military strikes might be used, but only if all other means failed.

A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THE WORLD

LONDON DAILY MIRROR

HE is the most dangerous man in the world.

A warmonger. A crackpot fundamentalist. A fanatic and a fool who has only the barest grasp of the killing power of the forces under his command.

His name is George W Bush and his main battle plan is to set the world on fire.

September 11 was a crime against humanity but from Afghanistan to Iraq, and now in Israel, Bush has blazed a purposeless trail of destruction and multiplied the dangers of terrorism a thousand-fold.

The War Against Terror has turned into a war of terror in Iraq as American troops butcher their way through the civilian population in pursuit of an enemy that grows stronger daily with each dead Iraqi civilian.

And in Israel Bush has overnight primed the entire region for a new cycle of slaughter by backing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's illegal land-grab of Palestinian territory and offering the Arabs nothing in return only despair.

Bush seems determined to unite the entire Arab world against the West. Already the mass murderer Osama bin Laden has gleefully vowed to avenge the Israeli assassination of Palestinian Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin.

After September 11 Bush promised to fight terror. But the only promise Bush has kept is the promise of more terror, more terrorist atrocities, like the Madrid bombings, to come.

As the American President Bush is supposed to protect democracy and make the world a safer place.

Bush is supposed to be the leader of the free world, a man who directly follows in the footsteps of such great statesmen as John F Kennedy, who saved the world from nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban missile crisis.

But airhead Bush is no Kennedy.

WATCHING Bush stumble through a live press conference, even when he knows the questions, is like watching a stranded goldfish gasping for air.

Bush is not just out of his depth, he is out of his element.

If it was not so truly frightening you could almost feel sorry for him.

If I was an American I would be ashamed. Ashamed that the greatest nation on earth is so badly led. Ashamed that their commander-in-chief is without purpose squandering the lives of his men, and Iraqi civilians.

And ashamed too of a President who sends men to their death but does not have the courage to attend one single funeral of the 700 US soldiers killed in Iraq.

Iraq and Israel might seem far away but every time you fill up your car you are taking part in the politics of the Middle East. The world economy still runs on petrol and that oil still largely comes from the Arab world.

If anything should ever happen to that flow of oil - civil war in Saudi Arabia or meltdown in Iraq - we would all know about it very quickly by the US$100 a barrel price tag and the three-hour queue down at your local petrol station.

The war against Islamic fundamentalism, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is a battle for the future of the world. It is a war the West cannot afford to lose. And it is a war in which the clueless Bush is blindly leading us all towards disaster.

As if the quagmire in Iraq was not bad enough, Bush has turned his destructive attention to the other regional hot-spot, Israel.

At the White House Bush summarily dismissed 50 years of Palestinian claims for an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Israeli settlements in the West Bank, all illegal under international law, were the "new realities" that the Palestinians would just have to accept, he said.

A couple of months ago I was standing next to one of those realities, an eight-foot high concrete wall, on the outskirts of Jerusalem in the small Arab village of Abu Dis.

Abu Dis is seven miles from the centre of Jerusalem and straddles the 3000-year-old pilgrim road to Jericho. Jesus Christ himself probably walked along the same road on his way into Jerusalem.

But last summer Ariel Sharon decided Abu Dis was no longer part of East Jerusalem and erected an eight-foot high concrete barrier across the middle of the road, cutting the residents off from their homes, their jobs, and their city.

ON the roof of a local garage the Israeli army erected an observation post and threatened to shoot anyone who climbed the wall.

The Palestinians ignored the soldiers and round the corner climbed the wall anyway.

I was standing on the "Arab" side of the wall chatting to Ahmed Bahar, a street falafel seller, when without warning an Israeli soldier lobbied a tear-gas grenade.

There was no shouting. No mob screaming threats. Ahmed saw the hissing gas canister, which landed about 10 feet away, and took off in the opposite direction. I ran after him but not before getting a choking whiff of the stinging gas in my eyes and lungs.

After 10 minutes the wind blew the gas away and Ahmed went back to his falafel stall. The other Palestinians quietly got back in line to queue for a taxi. And life started up again.

Ahmed said he had been gassed hundreds of times. He was past being angry about it. The real thing that bothered him was the disruption to his trade. He wasn't making enough money to support his family.

Getting tear gassed in Abu Dis for no reason is just one of the new realities that George W Bush wants the Palestinians to live with, along with hundreds of other daily humiliations of Israeli occupation. But is not a sustainable reality. Sooner or later some Palestinian will angrily strike back. There will be more suicide bombings, more killings, more despair.

To save the world from terror you have to have vision, intelligence and the ability to unlock the complex political problems.

But the only ability George Bush has is an unerring capacity to make a grim situation worse.

George W Bush is a clear and present danger to the world.

And we are all under threat until this bumbling oaf is removed from office and confined to a remote Texas cow ranch where he truly belongs.

White House Won't Criticize Assassination

Associated Press

The White House declined to criticize Israel's missile strike assassination of a top Hamas leader Saturday, saying instead that Israel has the right to defend itself from terrorist attacks and urging Palestinians to use restraint in responding.
Fearing retaliatory attacks from Palestinians that would escalate already high Mideast tensions, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in the wake of the killing of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the Hamas leader in Gaza, that "the United States is gravely concerned for regional peace and stability.
"The United States strongly urges Israel to consider carefully the consequences of its actions," he said. "And we again urge all parties to exercise maximum restraint at this time."
Rantisi was killed as he rode in his car in attack that also killed two of his bodyguards. A senior Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration had no advance notice of the attack. Israeli sources, likewise, said the strike was not coordinated with Washington.
The Bush administration response was similar to that nearly a month ago, when Israel assassinated Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
It was a sharp contrast to reaction from elsewhere. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned Israel's policy of targeted killings as "unlawful, unjustified and counterproductive" and a spokesman for the Arab League called the assassination "a criminal act."
McClellan on Saturday emphasized that the United States considers Hamas a terrorist organization, citing a suicide attack earlier Saturday that killed an Israeli border policeman and for which Hamas claimed responsibility. Israeli officials said there was no connection between the bombing and the killing of Rantisi.
"As we have repeatedly made clear, Israel has the right to defend itself from terrorist attacks," McClellan said.
Israel has threatened to kill the entire Hamas leadership ahead of a proposed unilateral withdrawal of its settlements in the Gaza Strip. Rantisi, a hard-liner who has pushed for accelerating attacks on Israel, had replaced Yassin as the new leader of Hamas.
Just Friday, Bush had called on the Palestinian people to do their part to take advantage of the planned withdrawal by installing "leadership that is committed to peace and hope." The Bush administration refuses to deal with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
But earlier in the week, with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his side at the White House, Bush also endorsed the part of the Israeli leader's withdrawal plan that envisions keeping many Jewish settlements on the West Bank and refusing Palestinian refugees the right to return to Israel.
That position, which represents a fundamental shift in longtime American policy, has outraged Palestinians.
As after Yassin's killing, Rantisi's assassination touched off a wave of Palestinian protests, and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia accused the United States of encouraging Israel's actions.
In urging restraint, the White House referred to Sharon's plan as offering hope for "a new opportunity for progress toward peace."
"All parties should focus on the positive, concrete steps needed now to make the Gaza withdrawal successful," McClellan said.

George W. Bush

"You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet."

(when asked "what would your biggest mistake be ... and what lessons have you learned from it?" )