Digby: Shoes Tumbling To The Ground

If any Democratic Senators are looking for a way to shine light on the Downing St Memo(and I'm not holding my breath) this may be the way to do it. And the beauty of it is that they can use that loudmouthed cretin John Bolton to do it:

John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved.

US probes Isle of Man scheme used by billionaire Bush donors

By Jason Nisse

05 June 2005

The Manhattan District Attorney, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are jointly probing a tax-shelter plan run out of the Isle of Man.

The scheme, devised by one of America's biggest banks and used by two billionaire donors to George Bush's election campaign among others, is being probed for possible breaches of securities and anti-money-laundering rules.

Saving the Fairies of Retirement Security.

By Mortimer B. Zuckerman Thu May 26, 5:31 PM ET

Once upon a time, America' s workers were protected by three good fairies. "If you work all your life to build a new America and save when you can," the fairies promised, "we three will make your dreams of a secure and happy retirement come true." One of the fairies guarded personal savings against the ogres of inflation, another kept an eye on the gremlins in employers' pension plans, and the third--the grandest fairy of them all--had a cave full of gold coins piled up by all the workers in a magical scheme called Social Security

Today, the fairies' promises are unraveling before our eyes. Personal savings rates are plunging. Company pension plans are in free fall. And the good fairy guarding all that gold? Well, she's being advised by no less than the president of the United States to start betting it on the stock market--despite the fact that the average stock market fund eked out just a 1 percent gain in the past five years, while investors who poured money into the 50 hottest funds over the same period are down an average of 42 percent. Think the good fairy can beat that?

Field of Dreams--Opium and Afghanistan

By Joellen Perry Tue May 31, 5:48 PM ET

KANDIBA, AFGHANISTAN--In a cool, mud room in this Afghan village nestled in a lush plain at the foot of the Hindu Kush, five farmers rue life on the right side of the law. For almost a decade, nearly everyone in this 184-family community worked in the drug trade, planting poppy and selling the opium to traders in the nearby town of Jalalabad. "The only ones not involved," says Wakil, a wan village elder, "were the mullah and small children." But this spring, facing the threat of government crop eradication, Kandiba's farmers planted wheat instead. Wakil strokes his hollow cheeks to demonstrate the result. "Look at us," he says, gesturing to his fellow farmers who ring the room, sipping green tea. "We have hungry faces."

Hungry faces may become even more common in the wake of a major new push to uproot the lucrative poppy economy. Newly elected President Hamid Karzai declared a national "jihad against poppies," and the international community has increased its counternarcotics aid pledges to nearly $1 billion. To understand the unprecedented magnitude of the challenge, consider this: Afghan opium poppy cultivation, by U.S. estimates, more than tripled last year from a near record level the year before. No other country in modern times has produced so much opium. The crop now accounts for 60 percent of Afghanistan's overall economy--and supplies nearly 90 percent of the world's opium (most of which is turned into heroin). Still, there are questions about the commitment to action by both the Afghan and U.S. governments. Amid criticism that Washington has let the problem fester, Lt. Gen. David Barno, former top U.S. military officer here, says, "Last year, the priority was the political process. This year, it's poppy."

A real swampy deal

Some deals seem too good to pass up. In the spring of 2002, President Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, unveiled a plan to prevent oil and gas exploration in a vast Everglades wildlife refuge. For $120 million, they announced, the Interior Department would acquire 400,000 acres of mineral rights held by a private company. Environmentalists, not usually big fans of the president, cheered. "This agreement," said Interior Secretary Gale Norton, "is a win for all sides."

The reality, federal investigators now say, is quite different. In a searing report obtained by U.S. News, the Interior Department's top investigator, Inspector General Earl Devaney, assailed the actions of senior Interior officials and Collier Resources Co., a prominent family-owned concern in Naples, Fla., that stood to profit from the deal. Interior officials ignored legal requirements and the strong objections of career employees, the report said, provided "incomplete" information to Congress on the deal, and agreed to pay a bloated price for the oil and gas rights controlled by Collier.

Dissapearing arctic lakes linked to climate change

Fairbanks, Alaska-Continued arctic warming may be causing a decrease in the number and size of Arctic lakes. The issue is the subject of a paper published in the June 3 issue of the journal "Science." The paper, titled, "Disappearing Arctic Lakes" is the result of a comparison of satellite data taken of Siberia in the early 1970s to data from 1997-2004. Researchers, including Larry Hinzman with the Water and Environmental Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, tracked changes of more than 10,000 large lakes over 200,000 square miles.

"This is the first paper that demonstrates that the changes we are seeing in Alaskan lakes in response to a warming climate is also occurring in Siberia," said Hinzman, who has also compared satellite data of tundra ponds on the Seward Peninsula near Council, Alaska and found that the surface pond area there had decreased over the last 50 years.

In this latest study, comparing data from 1973 with findings from 1997-98, the total number of large lakes decreased by around 11 percent. While many did not disappear completely they shrank significantly. The overall loss of lake surface area was a loss of approximately 6 percent. In addition, 125 lakes vanished completely and are now re-vegetated.

Atlas reveals global devastation

Saturday, June 4, 2005 Posted: 9:26 AM EDT (1326 GMT)

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- The devastating impact of mankind on the planet is dramatically illustrated in pictures published on Saturday showing explosive urban sprawl, major deforestation and the sucking dry of inland seas over less than three decades.

Mexico City mushrooms from a modest urban center in 1973 to a massive blot on the landscape in 2000, while Beijing shows a similar surge between 1978 and 2000 in satellite pictures published by the United Nations in a new environmental atlas.

Delhi sprawls explosively between 1977 and 1999, while from 1973 to 2000 the tiny desert town of Las Vegas turns into a monster conurbation of one million people -- placing massive strain on scarce water supplies.

Religion, Suicide Terrorism Link Disputed In Book

I wonder if this theory will prove true.--Dictynna

By REUTERS

Filed at 3:36 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A surge in suicide attacks in Iraq and elsewhere around the world is a response to territorial occupation and has no direct link with Islamic fundamentalism, according to the author of a new book who has created a database of such bombings over the past 25 years.

Robert Pape, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said most suicide terrorists were well-integrated and productive members of their communities from working-class or middle-class backgrounds.

``Technicians, waitresses, security guards, ambulance drivers, paramedics ... few are criminals. Most are volunteers whose first act of violence is their very own suicide attack,'' Pape told Reuters in an interview.

NYT Editorial: A Small but Dangerous Clause

At a time when world leaders are struggling to keep dangerous nuclear materials from terrorists and rogue nations, a devious provision in the energy bill now in Congress heads in the opposite direction. The provision would weaken controls on exporting bomb-grade uranium to plants abroad for use in making medical isotopes - radioactive materials used to diagnose and treat various illnesses. The measure is described as vital to keep the isotopes flowing, but its real purpose is to exempt isotope producers from pressure to work toward using safer forms of uranium.

The highly enriched uranium serves as "target" material that is irradiated in a reactor to produce the medical isotopes. Each year, the major isotope producers use or stockpile enough target material to make a small number of bombs. Arms controllers hope to convert the plants to low-enriched uranium that cannot be used in weapons, thus eliminating any risk of theft by terrorists or renegade nations.

'Home Fires Burning': Left Behind

By LAURA SHAPIRO

It's hard to imagine a more thankless version of married life than the one undertaken by Danette Long, Crystal Solloway, Veoletta Hayward, Heather Atherton and all the other women in ''Home Fires Burning,'' Karen Houppert's thoughtful and absorbing study of military wives today. Everything most other women take for granted, including the expectation that their husbands will come home from work alive, is subject to uncertainty. Moreover, it's their husbands' employer who chooses where they'll live, designs their houses, dictates how short to cut the grass and pays so stingily that more than a third of military families make use of federal poverty programs. No wonder, as Houppert notes, only 36 percent of the military wives say they would encourage their husbands to re-enlist. No wonder, too, the evening she attended a meeting of a Family Readiness Group -- the military's lumbering vehicle for fostering the equivalent of school spirit -- just seven wives showed up. The leader called it a better turnout than usual.

Bad news for the U.S. that is worse news for the world

moneybox
Upside-Down Interest Rates
Bad news for the U.S. that is worse news for the world.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, June 3, 2005, at 3:31 AM PT

Here's a bad sign: If current trends continue, we could soon be experiencing an inversion of the yield curve.

Though it sounds like something out of quantum physics, the yield curve is actually a fairly simple concept. It describes the relationship between interest rates on long-term and short-term U.S. government bonds. Interest rates on the shortest-term bonds correlate very closely with the interest rates set by the Federal Reserve Board. Long-term interest rates, by contrast, are influenced by many more factors, ranging from China's purchase of debt to investors' optimism about inflation and growth. Typically, bonds that mature further in the future pay higher yields—compensation for the risk of locking up money for a longer period.

When the difference between long-term and short-term interest rates is large, the yield curve is said to be steep. When the difference is negligible, it's flat. But when long-term rates are lower than the short-term rates, it's inverted. (On Smart Money's great yield-curve primer, you can click through the month-by-month interactive chart to see how the curve has shifted since 1977.)

Billmon: The Friday Flush

Talk Left notes the release (in the now standard late Friday document dump) of a Pentagon report confirming at least five different cases of Quran desecration at the Guantanamo Gulag, including kicking, stepping and pissing (supposedly by accident) on the book -- but not the now notorious Newsweek allegation that it was flushed down a toilet.

There are enough fishy details in the report -- such as the "accidental" urination story -- to suspect that it hides far more than it reveals. We are told, for example, of a prisoner (a hardened Islamic militant, mind you) who ripped the pages out of his own Quran, handed them to his captors and told them "he had given up on being a Muslim."

Right.

Juan Cole: June 4, 2005

At Least 19 Dead in Guerrilla Violence

Guerrillas detonated bombs near Balad, and in Samarra. Mortar rounds fell in Baghdad and there was a car bombing in the capital. A firefight took place in Tikrit. There were assassinations of important figures in Kirkuk, Baghdad and Basra.

The Washington Post has some more details on the bombing of the Sufi center near Balad north of Baghdad.

The Poor Man: The Ministry of Truth

Tech Central Station, taking time off from letting Islamist spokesmen attack evolution, decides to point out that Amnesty International is in league with the International Communist Conspiracy AND al-Qaeda. With this essay, I believe that the genre of torture justification/smokescreening may have reached its apex. While the nausea you may experience while reading this is entirely natural, you do have to admire the sheer nuggets on these people. Shameless.

The Poor Man: The Company You Keep

It’s old news that Amnesty International is a highly politicized pressure group, but these latest accusations amount to pro-al Qaeda propaganda.

Wall Street Journal
5/28/2005

The role of coordinator in the massed propaganda attack against the USSR belongs to Amnesty International.

Pravda/Radio Moscow
c. 1981

Most conservatives were outraged at Amnesty International’s inflammatory propaganda comparing Gitmo to a Soviet gulag, similar to their reaction to the indefensible refusal of France, Germany and Russia to support our action against Iraq, though their intelligence agencies were also convinced Saddam was amassing WMD stockpiles.

David Limbaugh
6/2/2005

the London-based group has a fertile imagination and is spoonfed by the propaganda centres of Radio Peking, the BBC, the Voice of America, Islamabad and Teheran.

Idi Amin
9/23/1979

Paul Revere A Despicable Tattletale, Says GOP

Republicans today criticized Paul Revere for his famous ride, saying that he had violated professional colonial ethics by divulging military secrets in violation of his duty to his lord, the King of England.

“These were sensitive informations about military troop movements with which he had been entrusted,” said G. Gordon Liddy, an expert on ethics in government and a professor at several unaccredited law schools.

“Paul Revere was a traitor and a law breaker,” said Anakin Skywalker in a confidential interview shortly before his limbs were lopped off and he burst into flame.

Conservatives all over America pointed out that Revere also endangered people’s lives by riding willy nilly all over Massachusetts at a full gallop in the dark of night. “He could have trampled someone,” said Bill O’Reilly. “Paul Revere was a reckless and irresponsible nazi,” he added.

TBogg: Chronicles of Deaths Foretold

Like Viet Nam, we are losing in Iraq. That's a fact. You cannot beat an insurgency that seems to have an unlimited amount of "martyrs" willing to walk into the public square and blow themselves up taking twenty or so citizens with them. The American military is bunkered into the Green Zone behind blast-proof walls and razor wire because; if they walk out into the streets...they're going to die. It's Fort Apache the Bronx. Those who are supposed to be in control of the streets are the Iraqi policemen, but if they are in control, then why do they have to wear masks? Because, if they don't the insurgents will come to their houses and kill them. Iraq is probably the only country in the world whose entire police force is in the Witness Protection Program.

Selling Washington

By Elizabeth Drew

1.

As the criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff was underway this spring, a spokesman for the law firm representing him issued a statement saying that Abramoff was "being singled out by the media for actions that are commonplace in Washington and are totally proper." Abramoff has since said much the same thing. The lawyer was half right. Like many other lobbyists, Abramoff often arranged for private organizations, particularly nonprofit groups, to sponsor pleasant, even luxurious, trips for members of Congress, with lobbyists like himself tagging along and enjoying the unparalleled "access" that such a setting provides; i.e., they get to know congressmen and sell them on legislation. They take over skyboxes at sporting events, inviting members of Congress and their staffs.

But Abramoff has differed from other lobbyists in his flamboyance (he owned two Washington restaurants, at which he entertained), and in the egregiously high fees he charged clients, in particular, Indian tribes in the casino business. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee, headed by John McCain, found last year that Abramoff and an associate, Michael Scanlon, a political consultant and former communications director for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, received at least $66 million from six tribes over three years. Abramoff also instructed the tribes to make donations to certain members of Congress and conservative causes he was allied with. And he was careless—for example in putting on his credit card charges for DeLay's golfing trip to the St. Andrews golf course in Scotland in 2000, with a stop in London for a bit of semi-serious business to make the trip seem legitimate. It's illegal for a lobbyist to pay for congressional travel, but Abramoff is reported to have paid for three of DeLay's trips abroad. A prominent Republican lobbyist told me that the difference between what Abramoff did and what many other lobbyists do was simply "a matter of degree and blatancy."

Bush to give back $4,000 in Noe cash; Dems want GOP to return over $100,000

By STEVE EDER and JAMES DREW
BLADE STAFF WRITERS

COLUMBUS — President Bush will return $4,000 in campaign contributions donated by Toledo area coin dealer Tom Noe and his wife, officials said yesterday.

A spokesman said the Republican National Committee will also return $2,000 contributed by Mr. Noe, who is facing multiple investigations for allegedly misappropriating at least $10 million in state money and possible federal campaign finance violations. The money will be refunded to charity.

But President Bush will not — at least for now — return more than $100,000 raised by Mr. Noe for his re-election bid last year, said Aaron McLear, a spokesman for the RNC. Democrats continue to call on the President to return all of the “tainted” money raised by Mr. Noe.

Billmon: Memory Loss

In his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez includes an episode in which the residents of his fictional Columbian village are struck by a bizarre plague of mass amnesia, forcing them to post signs like: I am a cow, milk me," or "I am a gate, open me," in order to keep up their daily routines.

I think American journalism -- such as it is -- might benefit if reporters and editors were required to stick a similar sign on their computer terminals: "I am Google, search me."

I mention this because of the latest example of complete institutional memory failure at the Los Angeles Times, as noted by an exasperated Josh Marshall. Reporter Janet Hook pokes a grubby finger in the eye of reality by arguing that:

Unlike President Reagan's broad-brush "Morning in America" campaign for reelection in 1984, for example, Bush ran in 2004 on a specific agenda of new issues, notably overhauling Social Security and the tax code. Some Bush allies say his recent troubles in Congress are a measure of how ambitious his aims are, not how much leverage he has lost.

Hook goes on to quote the usual White House shill as documentary evidence for her remarkable assertion.

Daily Howler - June 3, 2005

CHURLS IN CHARGE (PART 4)! Why are TV liberals inept? Lawrence O’Donnell’s grisly performance taught us to follow the money: // link // print // previous // next //

FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2005

NEWSWEEK DELIVERS: We’ve continued to marvel here as liberals keep carrying water for Newsweek. Indeed, on last Sunday’s Chris Matthews Show, the magazine’s foppish Howard Fineman brought us right out of our old beanbag chairs! The group was discussing Bush’s opposition to the funding of stem cell research:

MATTHEWS (5/30/05): Let’s take a look at where the country stands on this. We’ve got a CBS poll at hand: 58 percent support medical research using embryonic stem cell research. 31 percent oppose it. If you just look at Republicans, half the Republicans polled—50 percent—support stem cell research. 39 percent oppose it. Howard, what’s that say?

Let’s make sure you understand the numbers that appeared on the screen. Even Republicans favor stem cell research, by an 11-point margin, the poll said. But Fineman is an experienced scribe.

Digby: Who Cares What We Think?

Good post.--Dictynna

Matt Yglesias, blogging from his fancy new digs at the TPM Cafe, says today:

At today's Take Back America conference I saw some interesting polling data from Diane Feldman on a subject I'd pondered now and again. Unfortunately, the written summary of the presentation doesn't contain the exact numbers and I didn't write them down because I assumed this question would be included in the summary. The point, however, was that when you ask if America is "the greatest country in the world" most voters say that it is. When you ask if Democrats believe that America is the greatest country, most voters say that they do not.

I think it's clear that this perception creates some electoral problems. Indeed, it's a particularly serious kind of electoral problem because my guess is that the perception is probably correct.

It seems to me that if you are a member of the "reality based" community, as so many of us liberals claim to be, that you can't answer such a question without qualifiers. This means that we are unable to respond in appropriate knee jerk fashion and are therefore assumed to be unpatriotic.

Digby: What's Good For The Goose Is Only Good For The Goose

It is interesting that the ACLU got a ruling requiring that all the Abu Ghraib pictures be released to the public. What is really interesting is that the government argued that releasing them would be contrary to the Geneva Conventions. (Via Talk Left)

"It is indeed ironic that the government invoked the Geneva Conventions as a basis for withholding these photographs," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney at the ACLU. "Had the government genuinely adhered to its obligations under these Conventions, it could have prevented the widespread abuse of detainees held in its custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay."

Juan Cole: June 3, 2005

Sufi Gathering Targeted, 10 Dead

Andrew Marshall of Reuters reports,

"A suicide bomber blew himself up at a gathering of Sufi Muslims north of Baghdad, killing 10 people in the latest attack by Iraqi insurgents on religious sects they disapprove of, officials said on Friday. The bomber detonated his explosives on Thursday evening in a house near the town of Balad as Sufis gathered for a religious ceremony, Interior Ministry officials said. Sufis follow a form of Islamic mysticism that stresses the need for a personal experience of God. Some conservative Muslims consider them emotional or even heretical."

We'd need more context to understand what is going on here.

12,000 Dead in Iraqi Guerrilla War
Rate of Killing Same as Under Saddam

The final toll for Iraqis killed in guerrilla violence or the USG/Iraqi government response to it on Thursday grew to 39. In addition to the early-morning incidents reported here this morning, there were several further attacks around the country. In Baghdad, "men in three speeding cars sprayed gunfire into a crowded market in the northern neighborhood of Hurriyah, killing nine people . . ." In Mosul, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed 7 and wounded 10. In Mahmudiyah south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed 3 persons.

Oil Workers Mobilize
Iran Poised to Help with Reconstruction

Greg Muttit of the Guardian reports that the Iraqi oil workers' union is gearing up to fight any attempt to privatize the Iraqi oil industry. Since it can shut down oil production at will, it is a fight the union is likely to win.

The watermelon poisoner has been caught.

"Iraq's Ambassador to Iran, Mohammad Majid al-Sheikh, said that Iran is the most qualified country among neighboring states for reconstructing Iraq."

The Poor Man: Head On

Not backing off:

Amnesty International USA does not intend to back off. “Our call is for the United States to step up to its responsibilities and investigate these matters first,” Executive Director Schulz says. “And if that doesn’t happen, then indeed, we are calling upon foreign governments to take on their responsibility and to investigate the apparent architects of torture.”

Not backing off at all:

“The administration’s response has been that our report is absurd, that our allegations have no basis, and our answer is very simple: if that is so, open up these detention centers, allow us and others to visit them,” Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Zubaida Khan told a news conference. […]

Khan rejected a suggestion that Amnesty’s use of the emotive term “gulag” had turned the debate into one over semantics, and distracted attention from the situation in the detention centers.

“What we wanted to do was to send a strong message that … this sort of network of detention centers that has been created as part of this war on terrorism is actually undermining human rights in a dramatic way which can only evoke some of the worst features of human rights scandals of the past,” she said.

“I don’t think people have got off the hook yet.”

Dilawar's Death Mocks U.S. Claim on Detainees

Horrific...it is enough to break your heart over what we have become.--Dictynna

Torture for Amusement

For much of his five days in custody, Dilawar was brutalized, hung from the ceiling of his cell, even though no one thought he was a terrorist or had any useful information. Military policemen took turns kicking him above the knee because they found it amusing to hear him cry out ``Allah.''

When he was too weak to follow orders during interrogations - - his knees wouldn't bend, his legs shook uncontrollably --Dilawar was attacked, the Times reported. One sergeant grabbed him by his beard, crushed his bare foot with her boot and then reared back and kicked him in the groin.

That night, an interrogator summoned an MP when he noticed Dilawar's head slumped forward in his hood and his hands limp in his chains. After pressing his fingernail to see that blood was still circulating, the MP left him there.

On Dec. 10, dragged in for what would be his last interrogation, Dilawar was incoherent. Angry at his unresponsiveness, an interrogator held him upright by twisting his hood around his neck. An intelligence specialist who spoke Dilawar's Pashto dialect was disturbed enough to notify the officer in charge. It was too late. Dilawar was already dead.

U.N.: Weapons Equipment Missing in Iraq

Friday June 3, 2005 2:01 AM

By EDITH M. LEDERER

Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.

U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.

In the report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he's reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.

Bush, The Spoiled Man-Child

This really hit home with me...it articulates my thoughts and fears for this country--Dictynna

What causes the fall of empires? Why, stubborn leaders who speak like toddlers and never admit mistakes

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, June 3, 2005

Know what real men do? They admit their mistakes. Know what real people do in times of great stress and strife and economic downturn? They seek help, understand they don't know all the answers, realize they might not've been asking the right questions in the first place.

Know what great leaders, great nations do at times of war and fracture and massive bludgeoning debt? All of the above, all the time, with great intelligence and humility and grace and awareness and shared humanity. Or they die.

But not BushCo. This is the hilarious thing. This is the appalling thing, still. How can this man remain so blindly, staggeringly resolute? How can he be so appallingly ignorant of fact, of truth, of evidence, of deep thought? In short, what the hell is wrong with George W. Bush?

The Other Bomb Drops

by JEREMY SCAHILL

[posted online on June 1, 2005]

It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war.

But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began.

At the time, the Bush Administration publicly played down the extent of the air strikes, claiming the United States was just defending the so-called no-fly zones. But new information that has come out in response to the Downing Street memo reveals that, by this time, the war was already a foregone conclusion and attacks were no less than the undeclared beginning of the invasion of Iraq.

For Everyone's Eyes: The Downing Street Memo

BUZZFLASH: Minneapolis Star Tribune, After Being First Big Paper to Call Bush a Liar in An Editorial, Becomes First to Publish the Smoking Gun Downing Street Memo that Confirms Bush Fixed Intelligence to Manipulate the U.S. Into War

FOR EVERYONE'S EYES--THE DOWNING STREET MEMO

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL -- UK EYES ONLY

DAVID MANNING

From: Matthew Rycroft

Date: 23 July 2002

S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the U.S. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C [Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's foreign intelligence service] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Robert Parry: The Real Lessons of Watergate

By Robert Parry

June 3, 2005

As the Washington Post again basks in the faded glory of its Watergate coverage, many of the scandal’s crucial lessons remain obscure even to people close to the iconic events of 33 years ago. Ironically, that’s especially true for those on the winning side.

Indeed, it could be said that today’s U.S. political imbalance – tilting so much in favor of Republicans over Democrats – derived from the simple fact that conservatives learned the real lessons of Watergate while the liberals didn’t.

Most importantly, the bitter experience of Watergate taught the conservatives the need to control the flow of information at the national level.

Following President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, former Treasury Secretary William Simon and other conservative leaders began pulling together the resources for building the right-wing media infrastructure that is now arguably the most intimidating force in U.S. politics. A key goal was to make sure they could protect future Republican presidents from “another Watergate.” [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

The Pimping of the President

Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist Billing Clients for Face Time with G.W. Bush

BY LOU DUBOSE

our months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.

Billmon: A Cox in the Henhouse

President Bush on Thursday named Rep. Christopher Cox -- a champion of curbing investor lawsuits -- as the White House's choice to head the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, prompting academics to predict a major shift in the market-regulating agency's focus.

Reuters
Bush picks Cox to head SEC
June 2, 2005

________________________________

Contributions to Rep. Christopher Cox by the financial services industry 1993-2004: $988,763

Financial services sector’s rank among Cox’s contributors 1993-2004: 1st

Share of Cox’s total 1993-2004 contributions received from financial services industry: 21%

Total brokerage and investment industry contributions to Cox 1993-2004: $214,995

Total accounting industry contributions to Cox 1993-2004: $188,284

Cox’s largest single donor ($19,825) in the 2004 election cycle: Latham & Watkins

(Contribution data courtesy of Open Secrets)

Digby: For the Record

Yesterday I mentioned the fact that that FoxNews had the incredible chutzpah to discuss openly why nobody is reporting the Downing Street Memo --- without actually reporting on the Downing St memo. It turns out that there is a movement afoot to gain some attention for this thing and I think it's worth doing, if only for history's sake if nothing else. There should be a record of some Americans' interest in such a damning document that proves the president of the United States knowingly took the country to war on false pretenses. It may come in handy someday.

Digby: Losing Their Religion

Regarding right wing Christians putting their embryos up for adoption and insisting they not be adopted by gays or non-Christians (preferably not a working woman either) AMERICAblog wonders how this Bush promoted religious discrimination can get past the editors of the NY Times unaddressed.

I'll tell you how:

Though we have our lapses, (pdf) individual news stories on emotional topics like abortion, gun control, the death penalty and gay marriage are reported and edited with great care, to avoid any impression of bias. Nonetheless, when numerous articles use the same assumption as a point of departure, that monotone can leave the false impression that the paper has chosen sides. This is especially so when we add in our feature sections, whose mission it is to write about novelty in life. As a result, despite the strict divide between editorial pages and news pages, The Times can come across as an advocate.

The Mahablog: What's the Matter With Yurp?

I read the opening line of David Brooks's column today with a heavy heart...

Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American liberalism.

... because I realized it would be my duty to blog about this column today, which required me to read the rest of it.

Of course, in Bobo's World, whenever a tree falls in the forest it discredits large swaths of American liberalism, whether anyone hears it or not. So I am less concerned about what an animated cabbage thinks of American liberalism than I am about what the rejection of the EU constitution actually signifies.

I think it signifies that the people of Yurp are not an alien species but folks like us Amurrkuns, folks who put on leurs pantalon one leg at a time and who are just as capable of making stupid decisions in the voting booth as we are.

This does not comfort me much.

One-Man Wrecking Crew

Posted by James Wolcott

Donald Rumsfeld, whose Steely Resolve more and more resembles aluminum siding, is a man unafraid of confronting the full spectrum of America's enemies from Al Qaeda to Amnesty International. Some say he is too zealous in defending our freedom. Too candid. Too cocksure. Too unwilling to accept counsel and criticism. Too wedded to his overriding vision of military transformation.

Those some sayers are right.

His retirement as Secretary of Defence will leave a trail of ruination as its legacy that will stretch forward into the indeterminate future.

William Lind takes sneak-preview inventory.

"When Rumsfeld leaves office, what will his successor inherit?

"A volunteer military without volunteers. The Army missed its active-duty recruiting goal in April by almost half. Guard and Reserve recruiting are collapsing. Retention will do the same as "stop loss" orders are lifted. The reason, obviously, is the war in Iraq. Parents don't want to be the first one on their block to have their kid come home in a box.

Deep Throat Cover Blown, Washington Post Still Sucks

By Greg Palast
www.gregpalast.com

Wednesday 01 June 2005

I've been gagging all morning on the Washington Post's self-congratulatory preening about its glory days of the Watergate investigation.

Think about it. It's been 33 years since cub reporters Woodward and Bernstein pulled down the pants of the Nixon operation and exposed its tie-in to the Watergate burglary. That marks a third of a century since the Washington Post has broken a major investigative story. I got a hint why there's been such a dry spell after I met Mark Hosenball, investigative reporter for the Washington Post's magazine, Newsweek.

It was in the summer of 2001. A few months earlier, for the Guardian papers of Britain, I'd discovered that Katherine Harris and Governor Jeb Bush of Florida had removed tens of thousands of African-Americans from voter registries before the 2000 election, thereby fixing the race for George Bush. Hosenball said the Post-Newsweek team "looked into it and couldn't find anything."

Bush Chooses Conservative Cox to Lead SEC

I guess future Enrons will stay buried.--Dictynna

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 2, 2005

Filed at 11:05 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Acting quickly, President Bush named conservative Rep. Christopher Cox to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday. Cox would succeed William Donaldson, who announced the day before he was stepping down after 28 months.

With Cox at his side at a White House ceremony, Bush said the Californian is ''a champion of the free enterprise system in Congress. ... He'll be an outstanding leader of the SEC.''

Cox, 52, a member of the House Republican leadership, has a wide-ranging background, from foreign policy and economic issues to homeland security. He has represented California in Congress for 16 years. Before that, he was a corporate finance lawyer in private practice and served as a senior counsel in the Reagan White House.

Daily Howler

CHURLS IN CHARGE (PART 3)! Why do "TV liberals" argue so poorly? Perhaps they aren't "liberals" at all!

THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2005

JEST A-PICKIN’ AND A-CHOOSIN’: Tuesday night, Fox News seemed to show its true colors. On CNN and MSNBC—on all the evening network news show—the naming of Mark Felt as “Deep Throat” was the crowning news story. But not so on the Fox News Channel! Special Report gave the topic normal coverage—lead news story, half a segment during panel. But at 8 PM Eastern, Mr. O hit the air—and “Deep Throat” went back into the closet. Here were The O’Reilly Factor’s topics for the evening of May 31:
Talking Points Memo: “The American Civil Liberties Union is the most dangerous organization in the country.”

Segment 1: “Now for the top story tonight, another view of the ACLU's attack on America.”

Segment 2: “In the Factor investigation segment tonight, we've been reporting on the brutal murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford.”

Juan Cole - June 2, 2005

9 Dead in Tuz Khurmatu Bombing
Deputy Governor of Diyala Assassinated in Baqubah
Poisoned Watermelons

Iraq looked more and more like a macabre horror film on Wednesday, as the Iraqi military announced that someone distributed poisoned watermelon to its troops at a Mosul checkpoint, killing one and making 12 others ill. This according to Deutsche Press Agentur via ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Likewise, 3 children were blown to smithereens in a mortar strike while playing in their yard. Guerrillas launched a rash of a a carbombings Thursday morning. At Baqubah at least 4 are dead, including the deputy governor of Diyala Province. In the city of Tuz Khurmatu a bomb killed 9 Iraqis and wounded 28. In Kirkuk, a carbombing killed two and wounded several others.

Warring Visions of Iraqi Federalism
"Sumer" Rises in South

Al-Hayat says that its sources in Iraq describe an ongoing dispute between the Kurds, who want an Iraqi federalism that gives "states' rights" only to Kurdistan but not to other provinces, and the Shiites, who want a federalism that would apply geographically throughout the country. The Shiites want to create a southern super-province to serve as a counter weight to Kurdistan. Shiite leaders are planning a congress that can establish the instrumentalities for creating the region of "Sumer" in the south, which will consist of 3 consolidated provinces.

Women's Demonstration in Egypt

Women demonstrated in Cairo on Wednesday as part of a general protest by journalists and other oppositionists. They maintain that they were manhandled by Egyptian security forces during a demonstration last week during a popular referendum. The question in the referendum was whether other parties should be able to field candidates to compete with Hosni Mubarak in presidential elections. (In any case, only parties approved by parliament, controlled by Mubarak's party, will be allowed to field presidential candidates. They will exclude the Muslim Brotherhood, the major opposition group in the country). The narrowness of the referendum and the likelihood that it will leave the system unchanged provoked the original demosntrations.

Paying to play (part 2): Privatization of America's public lands proceeds at a rapid clip

Continued from part one.

"The Bush administration, in one of its biggest decisions on environmental issues, moved [on May 5]... to open up nearly a third of all remote national forest lands to road building, logging and other commercial ventures."
-- Associated Press, May 5, 2005

"The National Park Service is now considering contracting out the entire operations of three national parks, according to a memo from NPS Director Fran Mainella released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)."
-- PEER Press Release, May 10, 2005

This is the second part of my interview with Scott Silver, the Executive Director of Wild Wilderness, a Oregon-based grassroots environmental organization. Silver talks about public-private partnerships, the Disneyfication of our public lands and the Bush Administration's agenda for the environment.

Tomgram: It’s a Pentagon World and Welcome to It

Bases, Bases Everywhere

Pentagon Planning in Iraq, 2003-2005
By Tom Engelhardt

The last few weeks have been base-heavy ones in the news. The Pentagon's provisional Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list, the first in a decade, was published to domestic screams of pain. It represents, according to the Washington Post, "a sweeping plan to close or reduce forces at 62 major bases and nearly 800 minor facilities" in the United States. The military is to be reorganized at home around huge, multi-force "hub bases" from which the Pentagon, in the fashion of a corporate conglomerate, hopes to "reap economies of scale." This was front page news for days as politicians and communities from Connecticut (the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in Groton) and New Jersey (Fort Monmouth) to South Dakota (Ellsworth Air Force Base) cried bloody murder over the potential loss of jobs and threatened to fight to the death to prevent their specific base or set of bases (but not anyone else's) from closing -- after all, those workers had been the most productive and patriotic around. These closings -- and their potentially devastating after-effects on communities -- were a reminder (though seldom dealt with that way in the media) of just how deeply the Pentagon has dug itself into the infrastructure of our nation. With over 6,000 military bases in the U.S., we are in some ways a vast military camp.

Kos: Patriot Pastors

Wed Jun 1st, 2005 at 14:14:15 PDT

What's wrong with this picture?

Amember of my church gave to me a copy of the Ohio Restoration Project. This project is led by so-called Christians who have a plan for Ohio. The project will target 2,000 pastors throughout the state to become "patriot pastors." These patriot pastors will be briefed on a specific political agenda and asked to submit names of their parishioners in order to increase a database to 300,000 names. These pastors will be asked to place voter guides in their church pews.

Ken Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state and a governor hopeful, is named throughout the document. Blackwell will be featured on 30-second radio ads promoting this group's agenda and supporting the "Ohio for Jesus" rally set for the spring of 2006. At the end of the document are the words, "America has a mission to share a living savior with a dying world."

Here's the plan itself. It is a blatant effort to politicize Ohio ministries on behalf of conservative causes.

U.S., state to combine coin probe

By JAMES DREW and MIKE WILKINSON
BLADE STAFF WRITERS

COLUMBUS — Federal and state prosecutors agreed yesterday to form a task force to oversee the investigation of the state’s $10 million to $12 million loss from its rare-coin investment controlled by Tom Noe and to pursue criminal charges.

“This group’s mission is to try and obtain the maximum degree of justice that they can from the facts they find,” said Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, who said he wasn’t aware of any precedent in Ohio for the federal-state effort.

“It is a unique cooperative effort for these various agencies to be together,” said U.S. Attorney Gregory White of the Northern District of Ohio.

The task force will examine the “facts of the case” and consult with the various state agencies involved in the rare-coin investment investigation — the state auditor, attorney general, inspector general, and Bureau of Workers’ Compensation fraud unit, Mr. O’Brien said. The creation of the task force was announced after a 90-minute meeting yesterday in Columbus.

Meet Your New Counterterrorism Chief

Now Wash The Oil Off Your Hands
(posted June 2 3:30 AM ET)

On Sunday, the W. Post reported that the Bush Administration is quietly undergoing a “high-level internal review of its efforts to battle international terrorism,” apparently after realizing it’s present strategy wasn’t all that.

The story notes that “many of the key counterterrorism jobs in the administration have been empty for months,” including the head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

The NCC was created in late August 2004 by executive order, one of four orders Dubya signed as the presidential campaign heated up.

As CNN.com reported at the time:

Sources familiar with the executive orders said they fall well short of the [9/11] panel's recommendations...

...One official complained that the measures do not go far enough, saying they are designed to create the appearance of doing something to respond to the 9/11 commission "without really doing anything meaningful."

But we digress. That is the past. What about the future? Will this belated introspection do us some good?

Based on the reported pick to head the NCC, LiberalOasis expects more of the same, more policies that breed international resentment and help terrorists grow their ranks.

Daniel Gross: The Homeland Security Bubble

Is the War on Terror a bad investment?
By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, June 1, 2005, at 4:24 AM PT

If you wanted to invent a bogus-sounding Washington company, the kind of ominous corporation that belongs in a subplot for next year's 24, you couldn't come up with a name—or a business plan—better than that of Fortress America Acquisition Corp. Fortress America is a scheme by a bipartisan group of Washington insiders, including a Rhodes scholar turned professional basketball player turned congressman, a former senator, and an offshore investment company with ties to the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, to capitalize on the nation's fear of terror. Fortress America Acquisition Corp. is striving to be a kind of mini-Carlyle Group. (Carlyle has pioneered the art of transforming former government officials with connections to defense and national security into businessmen.) But Fortress America is a backward step in access capitalism. Rather than seeking to raise cash from smart money as Carlyle does, it's going after the dumbest money out there: people who are willing to write blank checks to a company that lacks meaningful assets, a track record, or a well-articulated business plan. As it forthrightly acknowledges in its prospectus, Fortress America is a classic "blank-check" company. A group of investors has set up a shell company with virtually no assets or operations. They will hold an IPO to gain the cash or currency needed to go buy companies.

Billmon: Dream House

If anyone has any lingering doubts that a rather enormous bubble has been inflated in the U.S. housing market -- at least in those regions benefiting most from our debt-fueled economy -- this news release should put them to rest:

Average U.S. home prices increased 12.5 percent from the first quarter of 2004 through the first quarter of 2005. Appreciation for the most recent quarter was 2.21 percent, or an annualized rate of 8.82 percent. The new data represent the largest four-quarter increase since the third quarter of 2004, when appreciation surpassed any increase in over 25 years.

This exciting news (for real estate speculators anyway) comes to us today courtesy of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the obscure federal agency charged with overseeing (snort) and regulating (giggle) the giant federally chartered mortgage twins not-so-affectionately known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which between them now hold some $1.7 trillion in mortgages or mortgage-backed securities.

Echidne: The Brig

The following essay is by "Doc" Bruce. It describes some of the effects of isolation on the prisoner, and of being a guard in almost complete control of the prisoners. The events in this essay took place during another time period and during a different war (the Vietnam one) and no parallel to current events is intended, except for the obvious psychological ones, those that exist because of isolation and the psychology of being a prison guard. As was shown by the Stanford prison experiment, most of us can be made into cruel tyrants if the circumstances are right. Most of us can also identify with the feelings the prisoners in isolation have. So read and learn what we may be doing in places like Guantanamo Bay.

Digby: The Incredible Shrinking President

Funny how we haven't seen any of the weekly news magazines do a cover story on the fact that Bush is the earliest lame duck in history. Considering that they were writing Bill Clinton's epitaph within three months of his first term, one might conclude that they are using a different standard. How unusual.

But then again, it isn't his fault and it isn't his job. Unlike Clinton he doesn't have a congressional majority of his own party to lead. Oh wait...

Digby: Maybe He Won't Be Back

Check out this fascinating pictorial deconstruction of Schwarzeneger's ad on BagNewsNotes today. (Or just click the ad at left.) For those of you who don't live in California, this ad is just pathetic, and it's chock full of product placement. I don't think I've ever seen this many brand names in a political commercial before.

But, as BNN points out, it's also aesthetically just a terrible ad --- even by political ad standards which aren't very high. It's not that it has some sort of cinema verite authenticity in its badness. It's just ugly and ineffectual.

Digby: Your Lovin' Don't Pay My Bills

John Aravosis wonders if liberals have "issues" with money --- he sees a hostility toward money on the left and wonders where it comes from. His readers offer some very interesting opinions on the matter, so be sure to read the comment thread if you find this topic intriguing.

I have a slightly different perception on the matter than most, it seems. I admit to having issues with it, probably because I always valued time over money. (Of course, as you get older you begin to realize that you run out of that too.) However, I don't harbor resentment toward others. I made my choices and I don't live a life full of regret about much of anything. I have no moral qualms about making money (in a decent way) and I don't think that it's my business to judge others on what they choose to spend it on. I appreciate what it can do to make life comfortable for the individual and how it motivates people to work. I certainly accept that there is something intrinsic to human nature in the acquisition of wealth and the desire to succeed. But I do have issues, nonetheless.

Digby: No Mirrors Available

This is too much. Shakespeare's Sister spots a FoxNews headline that says: Downing Street Memo Mostly Ignored in US.

Can you believe it? And then Fox goes on to wonder why that might be. They simply can't figure it out. They interview people and ponder the question and go to great lengths to explain why it isn't being reported. I don't see that they interview Roger Ailes or John Moody, however. Perhaps they were too busy.

Digby: The Party of Krugman

Somebody asked me what my favorite columnist was the other day and I said that I thought most liberal bloggers like Krugman because he writes the way we write --- he doesn't suffer fools and he writes with all the righteous indignation he feels at what he sees. And, I suspect that this is why establishment journos like Daniel Okrent don't like him. He just refuses to play the game by establishment rules.

Digby: Buy This Book

The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo : How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party

I have ordered it and await it eagerly. Rick Perlstein is one of the clearest observers of American politics around and one of the very few historians who really understands how the right wing works.

It's only 8 bucks and I guarantee that it will be worth reading even if you don't agree with his conclusions:

A majority of Americans tell pollsters they want more government intervention to reduce the gap between high- and lower-income citizens, and less than one-third consider high taxes to be a problem. Yet conservative Republicanism currently controls the political discourse. Why?

Juan Cole - June 1, 2005

Fallujah Film

The Italian magazine Diario has posted to its web site a film of Fallujah made by Iraqis (apparently by Iraqi government workers sent in to help with clean-up) in early January of 2005, at a time when the international press was excluded from the city.


The Iraqization of Afghanistan

A suicide bomber walked into the Abd al-Rabb Mosque in the southwestern city of Qandahar, Afghanistan, at 9 am Wednesday morning and detonated his payload, killing nearly 20 and wounding dozens. The mosque was holding a commemoration for a slain cleric, killed last week, who opposed the Taliban.

The Good Israelis

Revered Israeli news anchor Haim Yavin has made a five-part documentary on the Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1967, concluding that it has harmed Israel. He says, "Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people." He adds,

"My intention was to get the personal feelings of the settlers, of the Palestinians . . . It has strengthened my former opinion that we have to come to terms with the Palestinians; they are not all terrorists . . . Some of my friends on the left hate the settlers. I don't hate them, I appreciate them. I even like them, but I say in the documentary that I think they are wrong and they are endangering us."

9 Dead in Crashes
Jaafari Pledges not to Contravene Islamic Law

A bomb wounded three on the road to the airport from Baghdad. The bombers had been gunning for a US military convoy. In Fallujah, a bomb destroyed a car. (-LBC)

Al-Hayat: The body of the governor of Anbar province, Nawaf Raja al-Mahallawi was discovered. He had been killed on Sunday during fighting between American forces and guerrillas. The same fighting had led to the deaths of 4 Arab guerrillas who had been holding him for the past few weeks. Reuters quotes a report suggesting that the fighting caused concrete in the building to collapse on him. Reading between the lines, it seems to me likely that al-Mahallawi was killed as the result of US military action against his captors, though it is not clear if they knew they were dealing with his kidnappers. That pro-American governors of provinces are still being kidnapped and killed at will suggests that President Bush may have been exaggerating slightly when he recently said that everything is going fine in Iraq.

Rising doctors' premiums not due to lawsuit awards

Study suggests insurers raise rates to make up for investment declines

By Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff | June 1, 2005

Re-igniting the medical malpractice overhaul debate, a new study by Dartmouth College researchers suggests that huge jury awards and financial settlements for injured patients have not caused the explosive increase in doctors' insurance premiums.

The researchers said a more likely explanation for the escalation is that malpractice insurance companies have raised doctors' premiums to compensate for falling investment returns.

The Dartmouth economists studied actual payments made to patients between 1991 and 2003, the results of which were published yesterday in the journal Health Affairs. Some previous studies have examined jury awards, which often are reduced after trial to comply with doctors' insurance coverage maximums or because the plaintiff settles for less money to avoid an appeal. Researchers found that payments grew an average of 4 percent annually during the years covered by the study, or 52 percent overall since 1991, but only 1.6 percent a year since 2000. The increases are roughly equivalent to the overall rise in healthcare costs, said Amitabh Chandra, lead author and an assistant professor of economics at the New Hampshire college.

US 'losing its grip' on Baghdad's political process

By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: May 31 2005 19:27 | Last updated: May 31 2005 19:27

Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency has reached a “kind of peak”. The Sunni now realise they erred in boycotting last January's elections “and so, as Iraqis see their interests as represented in the political process, the insurgency will lose steam”.

This sanguine view of the state of affairs in Iraq--as expressed by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, in a recent Bloomberg interview reflects the US administration's struggle to demonstrate that it remains in control and still has an exit strategy.

In the more sombre assessment of others in the administration, however, the US has long lost its grip on Iraq's political process. “We are losing control,” said one veteran Arabist in the administration who requested anonymity.

Bill Clinton Takes Spot On Global Stage

By John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 1, 2005; Page A01

In 2001, in the opening months of his ex-presidency, Bill Clinton confided to an aide that he had decided on his dream job for the next chapter of his life: secretary general of the United Nations.

The goal may not be realistic, he acknowledged, but he then went on to analyze all the factors in minute detail, as though he were preparing for a political campaign: whether a U.S. president would ever see fit to back him, for one, and what it would take to persuade other nations to bend the long-standing tradition that the top job does not go to someone from a country with permanent status on the U.N. Security Council.

Mark Felt Ends 30-Year Mystery of The Post's Watergate Source

FBI's No. 2 Was 'Deep Throat'
Mark Felt Ends 30-Year Mystery of The Post's Watergate Source

By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 1, 2005; Page A01

Deep Throat, the secret source whose insider guidance was vital to The Washington Post's groundbreaking coverage of the Watergate scandal, was a pillar of the FBI named W. Mark Felt, The Post confirmed yesterday.

As the bureau's second- and third-ranking official during a period when the FBI was battling for its independence against the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, Felt had the means and the motive to help uncover the web of internal spies, secret surveillance, dirty tricks and coverups that led to Nixon's unprecedented resignation on Aug. 9, 1974, and to prison sentences for some of Nixon's highest-ranking aides.

Daily Howler - June 1, 2005

CHURLS IN CHARGE (PART 2)! Pursuit of buttered brain may not equip you for taking on Paul Krugman’s work
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2005

WHEN FOPS ATTACK: Okrent v Krugman? Just like that, it has all been posted, on the Times public editor’s site. First, Paul Krugman replies to the nasty attacks in Dan Okrent’s final column. Okrent then responds to Krugman; finally, Krugman makes a brief closing post. And what has come from this exchange? Incredibly, Okrent’s specific complaints against Krugman are even more daft than we would have expected. As we’ll see below, Okrent has to struggle hard to come up with any complaints at all; indeed, to build his total up to five, he has to cut-and-paste something Krugman brought up in his initial reply! Meanwhile, how inane are the mighty Okrent’s objections?

Kos: Chickenhawks, revisited

by kos
Tue May 31st, 2005 at 14:00:27 PDT

Gilliard:
Unless you're disabled, you have no fucking right encouraging others to die in your stead. If you weren't cowards, you'd be in the military, not whining about Kosovo or some other bullshit. The Army's recruiting isn't getting any better, and they need YOU. Not the kid from Wal Mart, not the ROTC grad. They need war supporters to take this seriously and walk away from their lives to serve their country directly.

But that won't happen. Because they are cowards. They hide behind the bravery of others and use it as a shield to deflect criticism. "Why if you attack my views, you don't support the soldiers."

My reply to that is "fuck you, gutless bitch." I've never heard a soldier run behind civilians to defend the war, so why are you hiding behind them.
Tacitus has been the lone conservative voice of any note calling for a draft. But we're not quite there. If every bloviating war supporter enlisted, we'd have the forces necessary to fight their war. But the gutless wonders don't enlist.

You Know You're A Republican When...

...Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

...trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

...A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

...Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

Digby: New Ideas

This is good. Some in the administration are apparently questioning whether waging a "Global War on Terror" is an effective way to deal with the threat of islamic fundamentalism. Wow. Next thing you know they'll be wondering whether taxes and expenditures ought to be in balance or something. Weird.

The review marks the first ambitious effort since the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks to take stock of what the administration has called the "global war on terrorism" -- or GWOT -- but is now considering changing to recognize the evolution of its fight. "What we really want now is a strategic approach to defeat violent extremism," said a senior administration official who described the review on the condition of anonymity because it is not finished. "GWOT is catchy, but there may be a better way to describe it, and those are things that ought to be incumbent on us to look at."

The Left Coaster: Information Stonewall

Perhaps we know now why the White House is fighting so furiously to prevent the Senate Intelligence Committee from getting all of the documents wanted by committee Democrats to evaluate the fitness of John Bolton to be our UN ambassador. According to Wednesday’s New York Times previewed in the International Herald Tribune, it has been leaked by administration sources that what the White House is refusing to release to the committee are reports that Bolton obtained from the NSA by way of a special request. And what is in those reports?

The names of American individuals and companies that may have violated export restriction bans on the shipment of dangerous weapons material to China, Libya, and even Iran. And is it too big of a leap to assume that some or all of these firms may prove to be very damaging to the White House, as campaign contributors?

Talking Points Memo: Deep Throat

The revelation of the identity of Deep Throat should throw in sharp relief again the simple truth that the most important stories almost always rely on sources who -- precisely because they are in a position to know key details -- cannot reveal their identity to the public.

Without anonymous sources, there would be little news, certainly no investigative journalism. And what passes as news would tend even more toward news shaped and packaged by powerful institutions and individuals.

Digby: Spent Capital

I'm Baaaack. Sorry for the interruption in service folks. I've been indisposed, but now I'm right as rain and ready to rumble. Or thunder. Or something...

And what do I see first thing? Bush's Political Capital Spent, Voices in Both Parties Suggest. Sweet.

Two days after winning reelection last fall, President Bush declared that he had earned plenty of "political capital, and now I intend to spend it." Six months later, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, his bank account has been significantly drained.

Juan Cole - May 31, 2005

31 Dead, 108 Wounded in Hillah Blasts
Basra Insecure

Suicide bombers in the Shiite city of Hillah about an hour's drive south of Baghdad killed at least 31 persons and wounded 108 on Monday. Al-Zaman says one bomber targeted recruits to the Iraqi security forces standing in line for a medical examination. Another hit recently fired security men who had been let go and who were demonstrating because they said they were still owed back pay. It should be remembered that these bombs inevitably kill a lot of civilian by-standers.

C.I.A. Expanding Terror Battle Under Guise of Charter Flights

By SCOTT SHANE, STEPHEN GREY and MARGOT WILLIAMS

Published: May 31, 2005

This article was reported by Scott Shane, Stephen Grey and Margot Williams and written by Mr. Shane.

SMITHFIELD, N.C. - The airplanes of Aero Contractors Ltd. take off from Johnston County Airport here, then disappear over the scrub pines and fields of tobacco and sweet potatoes. Nothing about the sleepy Southern setting hints of foreign intrigue. Nothing gives away the fact that Aero's pilots are the discreet bus drivers of the battle against terrorism, routinely sent on secret missions to Baghdad, Cairo, Tashkent and Kabul.

When the Central Intelligence Agency wants to grab a suspected member of Al Qaeda overseas and deliver him to interrogators in another country, an Aero Contractors plane often does the job. If agency experts need to fly overseas in a hurry after the capture of a prized prisoner, a plane will depart Johnston County and stop at Dulles Airport outside Washington to pick up the C.I.A. team on the way.

Ex-F.B.I. Aide Claims He's 'Deep Throat' in Magazine Article

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 31, 2005

NEW YORK -- It's one of the great mysteries remaining from the Watergate scandal -- and now, it's apparently been solved.

According to Vanity Fair magazine, former F-B-I official W. Mark Felt admits he was "Deep Throat" -- the source used by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to help uncover the scandal.

Their reporting helped bring about the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Felt is now 91, and living in Santa Rosa, California.

FEC treads into sticky web of political blogs

By Dawn Withers Washington Bureau2 hours, 47 minutes ago

Web loggers, who pride themselves on freewheeling political activism, might face new federal rules on candidate endorsements, online fundraising and political ads, though bloggers who don't take money from political groups would not be affected.

Draft rules from the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, would require that paid political advertisements on the Internet declare who funded the ad, as television spots do.

Similar disclaimers would be placed on political Web sites, as well as on e-mails sent to people on purchased lists containing more than 500 addresses. The FEC also is considering whether to require Web loggers, called bloggers, to disclose whether they get money from a campaign committee or a candidate and to reveal whether they are being paid to write about certain candidates or solicit contributions on their behalf.

These rules would not affect citizens who don't take money from political action committees or parties.

'Deep Throat' Revealed At Last?

“I’M THE GUY THEY CALLED DEEP THROAT”

Despite three decades of intense speculation, the identity of “Deep Throat”—
the source who leaked key details of Nixon’s Watergate cover-up to Washington Post
reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—has never been revealed.

Now, at age 91, W. Mark Felt, number two at the F.B.I. in the early 70s, is finally
admitting to that historic, anonymous role. In an exclusive, JOHN D. O’CONNOR puts a name and face to one of American democracy’s heroes, learning about the struggle between honor and duty that nearly led Felt to take his secret to the grave

The Disappearing Pension

Jonathan Tasini
May 31, 2005

Jonathan Tasini is president of the Economic Future Group and writes his "Working In America" columns for TomPaine.com on an occasional basis.

Here’s a basic moral value: taking someone’s money without their permission is stealing. Except in America, where, if you’re a corporation that takes away someone’s pension, it’s okay. And the question is: Why isn’t the progressive movement making a huge deal out of this?

With very little public outcry, we are letting corporate America dismantle the private defined-benefit pension system. At the same time, huge salary and pension benefits are lavished on executives. Remember, pensions are deferred compensation—people put off getting money in their paychecks today because of a promise that they would receive a specific amount of money (hence, the term “defined benefit”) many years later. It’s their money, not the companies’ money. The private pension was a fundamental pillar of the American middle-class dream: If you saved now, you could still have a middle-class life in retirement, and you wouldn’t have to gamble in the stock market to do so.

Hilton the Huckster

By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, May 31, 2005; Page A17

Arthur Aufderheide is something relatively new under the sun -- a paleopatholgist. His specialty, a recent issue of the New Yorker tells us, is the dissection of mummies to study ancient diseases. I, too, have an odd specialty. It is the study of contemporary culture by carefully noting the number of citations in the computer database LexisNexis. For instance, I am here to tell you that when I searched in the category of major newspapers, John Bolton, the president's choice for U.N. ambassador, got 110 hits for the past week. In the same category, Paris Hilton got 158. As a LexisNexisologist I can only conclude that America has lost its mind.

Daily Howler - May 31, 2005

CHURLS IN CHARGE (PART 1)! Why do we liberals lose spin wars, Drum asks. Incomparably, we start on our answer:

TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2005

MUST-SEE MTP: If you didn’t see Sunday’s Meet the Press,we strongly suggest that you read the full transcript. No runaway bride intruded here! For the full hour, Tim Russert and panel discussed the chances of a nuclear attack inside the U.S. And guess what? The chances of that are pretty good, all five panelists told their host. Here’s where the rubber hit the road, near the end of the program:

RUSSERT (5/29/05): I'd like to go around the table. Chairman [Thomas] Kean, let me start with you. Based on everything you've learned during the course of your work as chairman of the September 11 Commission, do you believe it's a distinct possibility that you could witness a nuclear bomb in the United States of America in your lifetime?

KEAN: I believe that, and we talked to nobody who had studied this issue who didn't think it was a real possibility. And if we don't perhaps head Lincoln's advice and, at this point, think anew and act anew, I worry very seriously.

LEE HAMILTON: Oh, yes, I think it's a distinct possibility. This technology is spreading. It's no longer confined to a few people or one or two countries. We've been fairly fortunate with the non-proliferation regime over a period of several decades now. We don't have nearly as many nuclear-power countries as might have been predicted 30 years ago. So the technology is spreading; terrorism is spreading; radical Islam is spreading. You've got an explosive mix here.

RUSSERT: Senator [Sam] Nunn?

NUNN: I agree.

Echidne: Why Women Won't Compete

According to the great expert, John Tierney, of the once-respectable New York Times:

Discrimination is one big reason, because men have traditionally made the rules to suit themselves and keep out women. But if you think that leveling the playing field would eliminate gender disparities, consider an unintentional experiment conducted in the Scrabble world, which is hardly a hostile environment for women.

For a quarter-century, women have outnumbered men at Scrabble clubs and tournaments in America, but a woman has won the national championship only once, and all the world champions have been men. Among the world's 50 top-ranked players, typically about 45 are men.
...
The guys who memorize these lists have a hard time explaining their passion. But the evolutionary roots of it seem clear to anthropologists like Helen Fisher of Rutgers University.

Wilderness Site May See Oil Drilling

By Julie Cart, Times Staff Writer

GULFPORT, Miss. — Tucked away in the 96-page emergency military spending bill signed by President Bush this month are four paragraphs that give energy companies the right to explore for oil and gas inside a sprawling national park.

The amendment written by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) codifies Mississippi's claim to mineral rights under federal lands and allows drilling for natural gas under the Gulf Islands National Seashore — a thin necklace of barrier islands that drapes the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.

As a preliminary step to drilling, the rider permits seismic testing, which involves detonating sound-wave explosions to locate oil and gas deposits in the park. Two of the five Mississippi islands are wilderness areas, and the environs are home to federally protected fish and birds, a large array of sea turtles and the gulf's largest concentration of bottlenose dolphins.

The legislation marks the first time the federal government has sanctioned seismic exploration on national park property designated as wilderness — which carries with it the highest level of protection.

Energy exploration has been allowed on rare occasions in other parts of national parks over the last decade. Since taking office, the Bush administration has been pushing aggressively for oil and gas drilling in traditionally protected areas. Moreover, administration officials have been whittling away at a long-standing policy aimed at sheltering parks from the ill effects of oil and gas exploration initiated outside park borders.

U.S. living beyond means, Dodge warns

Last Updated Mon, 30 May 2005 13:11:23 EDT

CBC News

OTTAWA - Bank of Canada governor David Dodge offered a bankerly rebuke to the United States on Monday for its borrow-and-spendthrift ways, which he suggested are a threat to world economic stability.

Less directly, he chided nations such as China for rigging their currencies to boost exports while building up larger and larger foreign-exchange reserves, creating a lopsided world in which Asian savings finance U.S. spending.

The Crusaders

Christian evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image

By BOB MOSER

It's February, and 900 of America's staunchest Christian fundamentalists have gathered in Fort Lauderdale to look back on what they accomplished in last year's election -- and to plan what's next. As they assemble in the vast sanctuary of Coral Ridge Presbyterian, with all fifty state flags dangling from the rafters, three stadium-size video screens flash the name of the conference: RECLAIMING AMERICA FOR CHRIST. These are the evangelical activists behind the nation's most effective political machine -- one that brought more than 4 million new Christian voters to the polls last November, sending George W. Bush back to the White House and thirty-two new pro-lifers to Congress. But despite their unprecedented power, fundamentalists still see themselves as a persecuted minority, waging a holy war against the godless forces of secularism. To rouse themselves, they kick off the festivities with "Soldiers of the Cross, Arise," the bloodthirstiest tune in all of Christendom: "Seize your armor, gird it on/Now the battle will be won/Soon, your enemies all slain/Crowns of glory you shall gain."

Tobacco companies designed cigarettes 'to addict women,' according to new study

Analysis of industry documents reveals how mistaken health beliefs and behavioral differences were exploited in order to enlarge female cigarette market

NOTE: The embargo has been lifted by the publication.

A new analysis of tobacco industry documents provides evidence that cigarette companies intentionally modified their products to promote female smoking by emphasizing attributes they knew would appeal to women – stylishness and taste, as well as perceived health benefits. According to the authors, the study presents particularly troubling implications for world health, as tobacco companies seek to increase smoking among women in developing countries. The documents, made public following the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, are examined in a paper in the June 2005 issue of ADDICTION, an international scientific journal.

Previous studies demonstrated that marketing strategies have contributed to the association of smoking with appealing attributes including female liberation, glamour, success and thinness. Until now, however, the role of product design in targeting cigarettes to address how and why women smoke was less well understood.

U.S. Bid To Dominate Invites Disaster - Gorbachev

By REUTERS

Published: May 30, 2005

Filed at 1:18 p.m. ET

GENEVA (Reuters) - U.S. efforts to dominate the world could end in disaster, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's last leader who launched an era of cooperation with the United States that ended the Cold War, said on Monday.

A critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Gorbachev called for the rapid withdrawal of what he called occupation forces, warning: ``The longer they stay, the worse the situation will get.

NYT Editorial: Ending the Gerrymander Wars

Congressional redistricting has become a blood sport. Texas kicked off a new era in 2003 when it redrew its lines for a second time after the 2000 census to give the Republicans five more seats. Now, there could be similar midcensus redistricting in several other states. In these partisan machinations, voters are the losers. The new lines eliminate contested elections, and contribute to the bitterly divisive atmosphere in Washington. A new bill in Congress calls for national standards for drawing Congressional districts. It would vastly improve the functioning of our ailing democracy.

Gerrymandering has always been part of American politics, but it has reached disturbing new lows. Party operatives now use powerful computers to draw lines that guarantee their party as many seats as possible. The longstanding tradition that Congressional districts are redrawn only once every 10 years was obliterated in Texas in 2003, when Tom DeLay pushed through a partisan "re-redistricting." Democrats are now talking about doing the same thing in states they control, such as Illinois, New Mexico and Louisiana.