29 October 2005

Battle Hymn of the Republicans

This item was offered in the comments at David Neiwert's site.--Dictynna

Battle Hymn of the Republicans

Mine Eyes have seen the bungling of that stumbling moron Bush;
He has blathered all the drivel that the neo-cons can push;
He has lost sight of all reason 'cause his head is up his tush;
The Doofus marches on!

I have heard him butcher syntax like a kindergarten fool;
There's warranted suspicion that he never went to school;
Should we fault him for the policies -- or is he just their tool?
The lies keep piling on.

Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
His wreckage will live on.

Driftglass: The underlying motives of the Modern GOP.

You and I, we live in a house built by giants.

Flawed giants to be sure – we’re all sinners here – but the men and women who made this place for us stood a full head taller than their times and looked to make us as fine a future as their magnificent, damaged vision could perceive.

The planks of the floor tongue-and-grooved together by Jefferson’s prose. The bricks laid straight and true by Washington. The kitchen kept tight and warm by Franklin. The Southern Wing fumigated by Sherman and made beautiful by Ms. Rosa Parks.

Everywhere the joins and seams are sealed against the elements by the blood of patriots who died at Omaha Beach, and Gettysburg, and Philidelphia, Mississippi to keep our house safe, or to force the landlords to keep their promise and make our house a home for all who live here.

Billmon: Crouching Prosecutor, Hidden Charges

Via the increasingly indispensable Jane Hamsher at firedoglake, the Booman Tribune provides a possible explanation for Fitzgerald's refusal to smack Scooter Libby upside the head with an Espionage Act or IIPA charge.

It makes the most plausible case I've seen yet for the proposition that the game isn't nearly over yet, and it's offered by a former attorney in the SEC enforcement division -- i.e. somone who's actually done this kind of work himself:

The Libby indictment goes considerably beyond what the rule requires, or even envisions. It is what's called, in courthouse vernacular, a “speaking indictment.” The purpose of a “speaking” filing, in any court proceeding, is to show the other side some of the stronger cards you're holding in your hand, and this indictment is no exception . . .

A New Moment of Truth For a White House in Crisis

By Dan Balz and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 29, 2005; Page A01

With yesterday's indictment of Vice President Cheney's top aide, President Bush's administration has become a textbook example of what can go wrong in a second term. Along with ineffectiveness, overreaching, intraparty rebellion, plunging public confidence and plain bad luck, scandal has now touched the highest levels of the White House staff.

Not surprisingly, Democrats were quick to condemn the president and his administration over the perjury and obstruction indictments of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. But even some Republicans suggested that the president and his team will have taken away the wrong lesson if they conclude that, other than the personal tragedy of Libby's indictment, the long investigation changes nothing of significance.

Indictment doesn't clear up mystery at heart of CIA leak probe


Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - At the heart of Friday's indictment of a top White House aide remain two unsolved mysteries.

Who forged the documents that claimed Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons in the African country of Niger?

How did a version of the tale get into President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, even though U.S. intelligence agencies never confirmed it and some intelligence analysts doubted it?

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who found no substance to the alleged deal during a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, accused Bush in July 2003 of twisting the intelligence.

Vet Who Photographed Iraq Loses Some Sight

Saturday October 29, 2005 5:46 PM

By ANTONIO CASTANEDA

Associated Press Writer

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Army Sgt. Walt Gaya spent his time in Iraq peering - through the scope of his sniper rifle and through the lens of his camera, snapping black-and-white pictures of his unit and of life in the turbulent city of Mosul.

Becoming a professional photographer was his dream. Losing his sight was his nightmare, which he sometimes mentioned in long-distance phone calls to his wife, Jessica, in Washington.

Then on a routine patrol last July in Mosul, with his trusty Leica wedged among the gear in his backpack, a roadside bomb ripped open the hull of Gaya's Stryker combat vehicle, wounding all nine men inside.

Unanswered Questions in CIA Leak Probe

Saturday October 29, 2005 5:46 PM

By MARK SHERMAN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will not produce a report that ties up all the loose ends of his nearly two-year investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Despite the indictment of I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, several important questions are unanswered:

Q: Will Karl Rove be indicted?

A: The fate of President Bush's closest political adviser has consumed Washington. So far, the answer is no. But Fitzgerald said his investigation is ``not quite done.''

Blood, sweat and fears in favelas of Rio

More than a million of Brazil's poor targeted in an attempt to 'clean up' the city

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Saturday October 29, 2005
The Guardian


Glorinha rarely leaves her rickety wooden shack. But, sat in the shade of a towering banana tree that flanks her house in southern Rio de Janeiro, the 68-year-old still has memories to help her while away the days. They are of her Portuguese father, one of the founders of the Vila Alice favela perched on the hilltops above the middle class borough of Laranjeiras; of the 14 children she has raised in her makeshift home; and of the hours spent nurturing the fruit trees that encircle it.

Talking Points Memo - 10/28/05

(October 28, 2005 -- 03:04 PM EDT)

Overlooked in the current discussion.

Go to page 5 of the indictment. Top of the page, item #9.

On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Divison. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

This is a crucial piece of information. The Counterproliferation Division (CPD) is part of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, i.e., not the Directorate of Intelligence, the branch of the CIA where 'analysts' come from, but the DO, where the spies, the 'operatives', come from.

28 October 2005

The Daily Howler - 10/28/05

UNFORTUNATELY, IT STILL ISN’T WORK! Hedrick Smith replies to our post—and we, in turn, to him: // link // print // previous // next //
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2005

PNAC NAIF STRIKES AGAIN: We’ve marveled before at Michael Kinsley, brightest man of the 1980s. More specifically, we’ve gaped and marveled at Kinsley’s frequent current factual cluelessness. (For our report on his ignorance of the important group, PNAC, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/9/05). And this morning, the PNAC naif has struck again. In the Post, Kinsley writes this about Judith Miller and Scooter Libby:
KINSLEY (10/28/05): Everyone assumed that Miller's source was [Libby]. Him and/or Karl Rove...He said he didn't mind if she testified. She apparently didn't hear this, so a couple months later he said it louder and she said okay. Then she testified that she couldn't remember who told her that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent, but it wasn't [Libby].

Prosecutor Subpoenas MoveOn.org Director

By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer
57 minutes ago

A Texas prosecutor has subpoenaed the head of a liberal activist group and records of political contributions from mostly Republican state judges in advance of a hearing Tuesday to decide who should preside over former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's criminal case.

Prosecutor Ronnie Earle on Friday subpoenaed Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org, a liberal group that took an active role in the last presidential campaign and generally opposes Republicans and their policies.

DeLay's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, requested the removal of state Judge Bob Perkins because the judge has made 34 contributions since 2000 to Democratic and liberal groups, including MoveOn.org, which has waged a campaign against DeLay. Perkins' largest contribution was a $1,000 donation to the Travis County Democratic Party in 2002.

Cursor's Media Patrol

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Vice President, has resigned after being indicted on obstruction of justice, false statement and perjury charges.

Billmon wonders "why Fitzgerald didn't hit him with the 1917 Espionage Act -- or even the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (a.k.a. The Big Enchilada.)"

Josh Marshall points to the top paragraph on page 5 of the Libby indictment as evidence that both Cheney and Libby knew the security status of "Wilson's wife."

Carl Bernstein tells Editor & Publisher that "we are obviously watching ... the implosion of a presidency," and Anna Quindlen writes that "maybe someday his security detail could drive George W. Bush over to take a look" at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where "he'll be able to see himself in the reflective surface."

An ugly turn toward torture

By TOM TEEPEN
First published: Friday, October 28, 2005

Something has apparently agitated our nation's nasty gene, and we're off on a toot demanding free range for some of our ugliest impulses. Take two as examples:

The vice president of the United States is pushing Congress to adopt prisoner torture as avowed U.S. policy, and there's an effort afoot in the House to expand the number of, as capital punishment lingo puts it, "death-eligible" crimes and give prosecutors a second whack if the trial jury won't approve execution.

The inspiration for such resorts to extremism is presumably again 9/11, which has come to serve as the all-embracing excuse for giving up any of our civilized ways that one or another politician can defame as pattycake.

Keep Investigating, Fitz

Robert Dreyfuss
October 28, 2005

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.

Back in the 20th century, when born-again prosecutor Ken Starr was industriously probing into every nook and cranny of the Clinton administration, it was a very, very big deal to the Republicans that President Clinton committed perjury in his testimony about—well, you know what it was about. Now, of course, we are about to be treated to a chorus of Republicans saying that it really isn’t a big deal at all that Karl Rove, the Scooter and who-knows-who-else in the Bush administration might have lied under oath about the outing of Valerie Wilson.

White House Braces for Indictment; Rove Said to Be Spared for Now

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 28, 2005; 11:21 AM

White House officials braced for the possibility that Vice President Cheney's chief of staff would be indicted in the CIA leak case today, while the lawyer for Karl Rove said the presidential confidant's case is still under investigation.

"The Special Counsel has advised Mr. Rove that he has made no decision about whether or not to bring charges and that Mr. Rove's status has not changed," said Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, in a statement released this morning. "Mr. Rove will continue to cooperate fully with the Special Counsel's efforts to complete the investigation. We are confident that when the Special Counsel finishes his work, he will conclude that Mr. Rove has done nothing wrong."

The Boom That Wasn't (PDF)

posted 10/26/05

This report shows that the $860 billion in tax cuts since 2001 has had little, if any, positive effect and that the largest impact has been negative: creating excessive permanent deficits that will lower our future standard of living.

Resource Center: New Nonprofit Gag Provision in House GSE Bill

Restrictions on Affiliations, Advocacy, and Nonpartisan Voter Participation for Grantees Passed House

H.R. 1461, the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005, including the new Affordable Housing Fund, went to the floor Wednesday, Oct. 26.

The final vote was 331 to 90, passing the bill. Thank you to all the advocates that worked so hard to defeat this heinous provision, and the Members of Congress that voted with us.

The Nonprofit Gag Provision is currently not in S. 190, the Senate version of the bill, and we will work to ensure that this provision will not be included.

A message from FAIR...

Too Many Liberals?
Olbermann says MSNBC bosses upset by liberal guests
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2707

10/27/05

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann recently revealed that network bosses were upset when he had two liberal guests too close together on his show in September 2003.

Speaking on October 25 to comedian and talk show host Al Franken, Olbermann said the following:

"You were good enough to come on this newscast with me late in the summer of 2003. It was August or September. And by coincidence, either the next day or the day before, Janeane Garofalo had been a guest on the newscast. And I got called into a vice president‘s office here and told, 'Hey, we don't mind you interviewing these guys, but should you really have put liberals on, on consecutive nights?'"


Olbermann added, "Al, can you believe that the country was actually at that point that recently?" Later he would answer his own question, saying, "Thank goodness we have steered out of that time."

Franken was interviewed on September 2, and Garofalo on September 4. Apparently having them both on over three days--a period of time in which Olbermann's show interviewed a total of 9 guests--was grounds for being called on the carpet at MSNBC.

This incident is consistent with the phobia MSNBC executives have displayed about hosts featuring too many left-of-center views. Phil Donahue's talkshow was cancelled in February 2003--despite being the channel's highest-rated show at the time--explicitly for his left-of-center political views. An internal management memo worried that his program could become "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda" (All Your TV, 2/25/03).

As FAIR founder Jeff Cohen--who went on to be a senior producer on MSNBC's Donahue show--explained to the American Journalism Review (12/04-1/05): "In the last months of Donahue, we were ordered to book more right-wing guests than left-wing, more pro-war than antiwar to balance the liberalism of host Phil Donahue." Cohen added that orders that Donahue's guestlist favor conservatives were stated repeatedly to the show's staff.

Cohen also noted that such dictates for counterbalance did not seem to apply to every MSNBC show: "Joe Scarborough is a current MSNBC right-wing host, and there are no orders from management demanding that his guest list favor the left wing."

But has MSNBC truly "steered out of that time," as Olbermann suggests? If MSNBC management were genuinely worried about ideological balance, then the fact that the channel currently has two one-hour programs hosted by well-known conservatives (Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough) and none hosted by liberals would be of considerable concern. Or MSNBC could fret over Hardball's right-leaning panel discussion after a 2004 election debate (FAIR Action Alert,
10/12/04), or the Hardball "town meeting" on the Iraq war that skewed heavily towards the pro-war side (FAIR Action Alert, 6/29/05). The group Media Matters for America (10/21/05) recently documented that Hardball's discussions of the Plame Wilson leak case frequently skewed to the right, citing nine examples of panels that included only conservatives, or conservatives "balanced" by centrists; the group found only one case where a panel similarly leaned to the left.

Having too many conservatives on, it seems, doesn't bother anyone in power at MSNBC.

(Read the Olbermann transcript at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9827774/)

27 October 2005

Anna Quindlen: We've Been Here Before

The Vietnam Memorial stands, in part, as a monument to blind incrementalism, to men who refused to stop, not because of wisdom but because of ego, because of the fear of looking weak. Not enough troops, not enough planning, no real understanding of the people or the power of the insurgency, dwindling public support. The war in Iraq is a disaster in the image and likeness of its predecessor.

The Cult of Personality Returns

Over at The National Review, Kathryn Lopez has written the single weirdest response to Harriet Miers' withdrawal that I've yet seen:
You know what the relief is this morning? A return to the feeling that this president gets the big things right. There was a detour, but I’m confident we’re going to have good news shortly on SCOTUS, because this president tends to get the big things right. That’s the confidence so many of us have always had in him. And we may have been worried about our assessment for a few weeks there, but there's a renewed confidence this morning.
Wasn't the whole Miers fiasco, to The National Review, an example of getting a Big Thing wrong? Didn't Social Security privatization prove a colossal misjudgement that set the stage for the administration's second-term struggles? Or were they, as Lopez suggests, mere hiccups and blips in an otherwise soaring record of righteousness?

Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.

No Escape: Thaw Gains Momentum

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Correction Appended

In 1969 Roy Koerner, a Canadian government glaciologist, was one of four men (and 36 dogs) who completed the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean, from Alaska through the North Pole to Norway.

Now, he said, such a trek would be impossible: there is just not enough ice. In September, the area covered by sea ice reached a record low. "I look on it as a different world," Dr. Koerner said. "I recently reviewed a proposal by one guy to go across by kayak."

At age 73, Dr. Koerner, known as Fritz, still regularly hikes high on the ancient glaciers abutting the warming ocean to extract cores showing past climate trends. And every one, he said, indicates that the Arctic warming under way over the last century is different from that seen in past warm eras.

Ex-Head of F.D.A. or Wife Sold Stock in Regulated Area

By GARDINER HARRIS

Dr. Lester M. Crawford, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, or his wife sold shares in companies regulated by the agency in 2004, according to financial disclosure forms.

The sales may have played a role in Dr. Crawford's sudden resignation from the agency last month after only two months as its leader.

The latest disclosure form, signed by Dr. Crawford on June 28, shows that he or his wife sold shares in 2004 in companies including the Sysco Corporation, a large food supplier; Kimberly-Clark and Teleflex Inc., which have medical-products divisions; PepsiCo Inc. and Wendy's International, which sell food products; Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which includes pharmacies; and Embrex, an agriculture biotechnology company where Dr. Crawford was once a board member.

Paging Dr. Ross

A doctor who defends corporations from "inconvenient" science has a secret of his own.

Bill Hogan
November/December 2005 Issue

When American corporations come up against inconvenient science, say, a study showing that mercury in fish can damage a developing fetus, or that a blockbuster drug has nasty side effects, they call in the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Industry-funded ACSH is the most aggressive debunker of pesky research reports emanating from government and academia. Its medical/executive director's calm, soothing voice can be heard on television and radio, quelling public fears about the latest bad news about health and the environment.

That man is Dr. Gilbert Ross. It was Ross who defended the Wood Preservative Science Council, saying that, contrary to reams of scientific evidence, the arsenic in pressure-treated wood poses "no risk to human health"; Ross who wrote on behalf of the farmed-salmon industry that the PCBs in fish "are not a cause of any health risk, including cancer"; and Ross whose organization once asserted that the jury's still out on whether environmental cigarette smoke really is hazardous to your health. Much of his time is spent tarnishing noncorporate-sponsored work as junk science of questionable motive.

Was Berlusconi Behind the Pre-Iraq War Yellow Cake Story?

It was one of the biggest of the American pre-war blunders. Iraq, documents showed, had tried to buy uranium from Niger. The papers, though, soon proved to be false. But who forged them? Now, a new article in an Italian newspaper says that the Italian government was heavily involved.

Remember the Niger "yellow cake" scandal? Back in the days before the US invasion of Iraq, nobody -- except of course the UN weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq -- was really sure whether Saddam had the Bomb or not. US President George W. Bush was desperately looking for some shred of proof that might work as pretence for invasion. In 2002, he thought he had just what he was looking for. Iraq, or so it seemed based on some documents turned up by the CIA and British intelligence, had been attempting to buy so-called "yellow cake" -- a substance rich in uranium -- from Niger. Indeed, the yellow cake deal became one of the main early foundations for the US justification of an Iraq invasion.

Buzz about a Karl plea as probers close in

BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK, KENNETH R. BAZINET and JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - Jittery Bush aides gnawed their nails yesterday as a special prosecutor zeroed in on White House political guru Karl Rove's role in blowing a CIA agent's cover.

In the closing hours of the grand jury probe, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald paid a visit yesterday to Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, prompting speculation that a plea bargain could be in the works for the deputy White House chief of staff.

Doubts Raised on Saudi Vow for More Oil

By JEFF GERTH

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - Last spring, the White House publicly embraced plans by Saudi Arabia to increase its oil production capacity significantly. But privately, some officials and others advising the government are skeptical about some of those Saudi forecasts.

The United States relies on a few producers to maintain enough spare capacity to keep prices and markets stable, even during war or disaster. As oil prices have climbed over the last few years amid surging demand and tight supplies, the Bush administration has looked to the Persian Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, to pump extra oil.

But doubts about Saudi Arabia's assurances of how much it can expand capacity - and for how long - have been raised in a secret intelligence report and in a separate analysis by a leading government oil adviser, according to a federal government official and the oil expert.

In Hurricane Tax Package, a Boon for Wealthy Donors

By STEPHANIE STROM

A little-noted provision in the tax relief package to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina is shaping up as a windfall for charity and a drain on government coffers.

It allows donors who make cash gifts to almost any charity by the end of this year to deduct an amount equal to virtually 100 percent of their adjusted gross incomes, double the normal limit of 50 percent of income. The tantalizing prospect has set off a financial scramble among some wealthy donors and charities vying for their dollars.

"I just keep thinking there's got to be a catch, they can't really be doing this," said C. Kemmons Wilson Jr., a Memphis businessman whose father was the founder of Holiday Inns Inc.

The Fitzgerald Spinmeisters

Russ Baker
October 27, 2005

Investigative reporter and essayist Russ Baker is a longtime contributor to TomPaine.com. He is the founder of the Real News Project, a new organization dedicated to producing groundbreaking investigative journalism. He can be reached at russ@russbaker.com.

Perhaps by the time you read this, you will know the outcome of Patrick Fitzgerald’s inquiries into the so-called Valerie Plame Affair. Perhaps, up until that announcement came or comes, you have resisted planning, oh, say, a, cigarettes-in-prison fund for Karl Rove.

But some won’t wait. Everyone with a vested interest in minimizing the significance of any outcome—i.e. anyone who goes down with the good ship Bushypop, from hack legislators to hack pundits to hack political hacks—has spent the past week or so frantically digging through their chest of hoary excuses. Perhaps it is from a subconscious sense of guilt, perhaps it is just good political sense.

An Iraq Policy, Better Late Than Never

By Dana Milbank

Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page A03

The good news: John Kerry settled on his Iraq policy yesterday.

The bad news: He did so 51 weeks after losing the election.

Harriet Miers Withdraws Nomination

By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 27, 2005; 11:27 AM

Harriet Miers withdrew this morning as a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

In announcing the decision, Miers and President Bush cited their concern with the requests of members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for documents dealing with her work as White House counsel that the administration has chosen to withhold as privileged.

Bottle of Blog: The Very Worst People In The World, Part Whatever

Wow! If Wal-Mart can even further screw it's employees, one half of which have children who are uninsured or on Medicaid--that's right! The children of Wal-Mart employees are relying on taxpayers to pay for their meager health care--Wal-Mart can save one billion dollars by 2011!

And Wal-Mart can pass those savings--at the expense of American taxpayers--onto its shareholders! Who are mostly the Walton family. And we all know how much the Walton family needs a few extra dollars at the expense of their employees and the American taxpayer.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 10/26/05

A Financial Times article on the case quotes Frank Luntz as saying, "If [Fitzgerald] indicts, they [the White House] will have no choice but to attempt to demonize him. I think that is going to be really, really tough."

Laura Rozen reports on La Repubblica's series on the Niger forgeries, which confirmed that the head of Italy's military intelligence service met secretly with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in Washington on September 9, 2002. Plus: 'The Real Significance' of the La Repubblica stories.

In 'Background to Betrayal,' Justin Raimondo writes that "In short, SISMI knew the documents were fakes but pushed them to help the White House gin up a war. The question is: who else knew? ... Did Hadley know? Did Libby? Did Cheney?"

"The shocking thing about the trellis of revelations" concerning Vice President Cheney, writes Maureen Dowd, "is how unshocking it all is. It's exactly what we thought was going on, but we never thought we'd actually hear the lurid details."

A hunger-striking detainee's request to be allowed to die is said to have been made "out of desperation" over being held at Guantanamo Bay without charges since 2002.

With a think tank predicting that the U.S. is "likely to stay in Iraq after Bush," a Pentagon public affairs nominee disclosed his plans to "encourage more positive stories," and defended his article charging that "Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al Qaeda have a partner in Al-Jazeera and, by extension, most networks in the U.S."

26 October 2005

Driftglass: The Night Before Fitzmas

Driftglass posts this item from a commentor in another blog--Dictynna.

Twas the nite before Fitzmas and through the White House
Not a neocon stirred, even Cheney, that louse
The documents were shredded and all burned with care
Even Judy was smart enough not to be there

The liberals were snuggled all warm in their beds
Convinced that George Bush would no longer be led
With Laura in her burkah and George in his cap
He thought to himself, can I beat this wrap?

Then from the news there arose such a clatter
George ran to his office "what the hell is the matter!?!"
He grabbed Rove and said "what is the excitement?"
And there stood Fitzgerald, hands full of indictments

Karl’s bald head then started to glow
Like George Bush’s nose, in the days he did blow
When what to his bloodshot eyes should appear
But cops and attorneys and all coming near

Digby: "We will ask not only what is legal, but also what is right"

"Only one in 10 Americans said they believe Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the leaking of a CIA operative's identity, according to a national poll released Tuesday."

I will change the tone of Washington. I'll bring good people to our nation's Capitol, and surround myself with a strong team of capable leaders.

I sent a clear signal of my intentions when I named a great citizen to be my running mate: Dick Cheney.

Digby: Whoa

Whoa

Richard Sale is not an idle nobody conspiracy blogger like me. He is a seasoned intelligence coorespondent with impeccable sources. And he is writing some amazing, amazing stuff today, which, if true, is going to blow the lid off this government:
Although most press accounts emphasized that Fitzgerald was likely to concentrate on attempts by Libby Rove and others to cover-up wrongdoing by means of perjury before the grand jury, lying to federal officials, conspiring to obstruct justice, etc. But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant.

Digby: Flirting With Moneypenny

People seem to be wondering why Fitz had FBI agents out asking the Wilsons' neighbors if they knew she was an undercover agent. Why would he do this so late in the game?

I suspect it came from a grand juror's question.

Digby: The Kids Who Couldn't Wait For Fitzmas

It's driving me crazy too. But we need to take a longer view of this, I think. If we get sealed indictments, if the grand jury is extended, if a new grand jury is empaneled it is only our nerves that are stretched.

Mark Kleiman writes
, and I agree:

Yes, I'm as eager as everyone else to know what Fitzgerald is going to do. But today's delay strikes me as both a Good Thing in itself and a good sign as to the eventual outcome.

Digby: Good As Gold

Via tribe34 at DKos, I see that Condi is a little bit on edge these days:
Rice bristled when asked how the U.S. could be trusted when it doesn't live up to its international agreements.

"Well, I think the word of the United States has been as good as gold in its international dealings and its agreements," she snapped.
Good as gold means withdrawal from the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, refusing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and abrogating the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, I guess.

The Daily Howler - 10/26/05

TRANSITIONS ARE HARD! An e-mailer challenges “no harm, no foul.” With lightning speed, we answer: // link // print // previous // next //
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2005

TRANSITIONS ARE HARD: We aren’t going to post today, except for one brief e-mail Q-and-A. A reader asked a good question about the notion of “no harm, no foul” in the Plame “outing” matter (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/25/05). Here was his statement: E-MAIL: “No harm, no foul?”

If I throw a cinderblock off an overpass, just because no one got hurt I should be let off the hook?

And that one's easy to determine harm.

Juan Cole: Iraq requires more sacrifice

Iraq requires more sacrifice: Bush
Constitution Enacted, According to Electoral High Commission


It takes an Aussie newspaper to put the headline so bluntly. As the milestone of 2,000 US military deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war passed on Tuesday, " Iraq requires more sacrifice: Bush." Now Bush is menacing us with Usamah Bin Laden taking over Iraq. Note that this scenario would have been utterly laughable in 2002. That is, anyone who heard that Bush thought Usamah Bin Ladin could overthrow Saddam and take over Iraq would have just fallen down laughing. Saddam would have had all the al-Qaeda people just taken out and shot. Twice. It was risible. Now, Bush has screwed up things so royally that he can even say this with a straight face. (It still is fairly ridiculous, since 80 percent of Iraqi is Shiites and Kurds who would kill Usamah on sight, and few Iraqi Sunni Arabs would want a fugitive Saudi terrorist as their leader). It is George W. Bush's fault if this outcome is at all plausible. His policies have reduced Iraq to violent chaos, and he is the one who let Usamah escape at Tora Bora. And then he made the US military lie about it during the presidential campaign! Impeachment is too good for this kind of dishonesty and incompetence. Actually I have to just stop writing about this now before my blood pressure goes into the 200s. Usamah in Iraq, indeed.

Al-Hayat: The Iraqi High Electoral Commission announced that 78.4 percent of Iraqis who voted in the constitutional referendum approved the new constitution. But there were enormous differences among the provinces, which observers expected to result in increased violence. The two largely Sunni Arab provinces of Anbar and Salahuddin rejected the constitution by a wide margin. The third province where they might have done so was Ninevah, and if they had succeeded in mustering a two-thirds majority against it there, it would have failed. As it was, the official tally against in Ninevah was 55.08 percent.

The Kurdistan Alliance and the United Iraqi Alliance, the two coalitions that dominated parliament and produced the constitution, hailed its passage as "historic" and said it would help fight terrorism.

Nancy Youssef of Knight Ridder reports on the extreme suspicion with which the results were viewed by Sunni Arabs and by Shiites of the Sadr Movement.

A constitution should be a bargain and a compromise among the major factions in a nation. If a single bloc like the Sunni Arabs of Iraq rejects the constitution, then it isn't really a constitution. And this one guarantees that the guerrilla war goes on for a long time.

Al-Hayat: Sunni figure Salih Mutlak complained that the tallying in Ninevah was carried out by Peshmerga militiamen, who, he alleged, tampered with the ballots. He insisted that the vote in Ninevah was in fact 2/3s against, and that the constitution had really failed, even if the elected Iraqi government would not recognize it. Mutlak intimated that the Sunni Arabs would now boycott the December 15 parliamentary elections.

Three car bombs exploded in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, resulting in the deaths of 13 Peshmerga militiamen. This city is the power base of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, and the Sunni Arab guerrillas are underlining that they can reach into any corner of the country. No one is safe. In other attacks, guerrilla violence killed 2 US GIs and 11 Iraqis.

Al-Sabah: Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari dedicated $182 million to the southern port city of Basra, much of it to be used to build two new docks. Jaafari and his government will go to the polls on December 15.

Billmon: Oh Sh*t

It looks like I may have been wrong once again when I contended that Fitzgerald isn't digging into the neocon shitpile. (I love making these kinds of mistakes.)

This is from UPI correspondent Richard Sale, who hates the neocons with a paleocon vengeance, but whose reporting on Plamegate and the pre-war intelligence frauds has heretofore been pretty solid:

The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28

Billmon: A Fitzmas Carol

At last the the cover up was done, the hard drives cleared, the secure areas swept, and the stories rehearsed. The alibis having been tested, and considered perfect, interrogatories were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of incriminating documents thrown in the shredder. Then all the vice president's staff drew round the hearth, in what Dick Cheney called a circle, meaning half a one; and at the vice president's elbow stood the office display of torture devices. Two thumbscrews and a rack missing one shackle.

At Public Universities, Warnings of Privatization

By SAM DILLON

Taxpayer support for public universities, measured per student, has plunged more precipitously since 2001 than at any time in two decades, and several university presidents are calling the decline a de facto privatization of the institutions that played a crucial role in the creation of the American middle class.

Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University, said this year that skyrocketing tuition was a result of what he called "public higher education's slow slide toward privatization."

Other educators have made similar assertions, some avoiding the term "privatization" but nonetheless describing a crisis that they say is transforming public universities. At an academic forum last month, John D. Wiley, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that during the years after World War II, America built the world's greatest system of public higher education.

Future Shock at the Fed

By JAMES GRANT
Published: October 26, 2005

PRESIDENT BUSH's choice to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board has raised a roar of approval. Economist, scholar, presidential counselor and former Fed governor, Ben S. Bernanke is a nominee from central casting.

But there is one rub. The man with the gray beard and the perfect résumé - winner of the South Carolina state spelling bee, Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, former chairman of the Princeton economics department - professes to believe the impossible. He insists that the Fed can keep the economy chugging and prices stable just by pushing a single interest rate (the so-called federal funds rate) up and down.

Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
and MICHAEL BARBARO

An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.

In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."

Rosa Parks: The story behind her sitting down.

By Diane McWhorter
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005, at 4:48 PM PT

Rosa Parks, 1913-2005
My favorite image of Rosa Parks, who died Monday at the age of 92, is of the confrontation between her and a policeman on that auspicious afternoon of Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala. After the officer had instructed her to "make it light on yourself" and give up her seat to a standing white man, she later said, she asked him, "Why do you push us around?" And he had given an honest answer: "I don't know." But then he explained that he had to arrest her anyway (even though she was not in technical violation of the city's segregation laws, but that's a whole other tangent of this rich saga). And so did history turn. In support of Parks' defiance, the black citizens of Montgomery boycotted the city buses until segregated seating was abolished, one whole year later. And so was born what is still known as the modern civil rights movement.

Senate panel backs Medicare, Medicaid cuts

By TODD ZWILLICH

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Senate Finance Committee members passed a spending-cut package Tuesday evening, dropping just over $10 billion from the Medicare and Medicaid programs over the next five years.

The move is part of an overall Republican effort to cut $35 billion from the federal budget. The bill passed the committee over the objections of all nine of its Democrats, who opposed what they said was an inadequate effort to send health aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The vote was the product of months of negotiations among committee Republicans, who struggled to find acceptable ways to cut billions from Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. Several moderates had opposed provisions that would increase recipients' out-of-pocket costs or cut benefits.

Measure Would Alter Federal Death Penalty System

House Legislation to Renew USA Patriot Act Would Loosen Some Provisions for Execution

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A02

The House bill that would reauthorize the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law includes several little-noticed provisions that would dramatically transform the federal death penalty system, allowing smaller juries to decide on executions and giving prosecutors the ability to try again if a jury deadlocks on sentencing.

The bill also triples the number of terrorism-related crimes eligible for the death penalty, adding, among others, the material support law that has been the core of the government's legal strategy against terrorism.

Bigger, Stronger Homemade Bombs Now to Blame for Half of U.S. Deaths

By John Ward Anderson, Steve Fainaru and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Oct. 25 -- After 31 months of fighting in Iraq, more than half of all American fatalities are now being caused by powerful roadside bombs that blast fiery, lethal shrapnel into the cabins of armored vehicles, confronting every patrol with an unseen, menacing adversary that is accelerating the U.S. death toll.

U.S. military officials, analysts and militants themselves say insurgents have learned to adapt to U.S. defensive measures by using bigger, more sophisticated and better-concealed bombs known officially as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. They are sometimes made with multiple artillery shells and Iranian TNT, sometimes disguised as bricks, boosted with rocket propellant, and detonated by a cell phone or a garage door opener.

Buffalo Soldiers

Hutch Tech's New Program: Forcible Constcription
Allan Uthman

“State education law says a child can only participate in JROTC if they’re 14 years or older, if they voluntarily want to do it, and only if they have their parents’ permission. It’s quite specific.”

So says John A. Curr III, acting director of the New York Civil Liberties Union’s western regional office. But Hutchinson Central Technical Institute Principal David Greco sees it differently. Hutch Tech’s entire freshman class was auto-enrolled in the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps this year, and may have been for two previous years.

Greco says parents were sent two letters over the summer giving them the chance to opt out of the program. But students who missed the opt-out deadline were out of luck—until some angry parents and the NYCLU piped up.

On Syria, the NYT Still Doesn't Get It

By Robert Parry
October 25, 2005

It’s finally dawning on the New York Times how thoroughly it was spun on the fictions about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, but the “newspaper of record” is showing the same credulity about the emerging Syrian crisis.

“Some deeply troubling facts about the murder of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister, have now been established by a tough and meticulous United Nations investigation,” the Times wrote in an Oct. 25 editorial demanding punishment for top Syrian and Lebanese officials supposedly implicated by the report.

Molly Ivins: Blessed stubbornness

Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate

10.25.05 - AUSTIN, Texas -- I am writing about the most extraordinary book by the most extraordinary woman, and I would have interviewed her at length, except she's going to be arrested if she ever sets foot back in our home state.

That's pretty much the way life goes these days for Diane Wilson, who used to be just a regular old shrimper and mother of five kids, until she accidentally became an activist. Then, all hell broke loose. The results are described in "An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas."

I believe the book will become a classic, not just of the environmental movement, but of American lit, as well. It is the rare, clear, moving voice of a working-class woman goaded into action against the greatest massed forces in the world today: globalized corporate greed backed by government power.

Ted Rall: Why Bush Is Unimpeachable

By Ted RallTue Oct 25,11:44 AM ET

Cracks Appear in the Constitution


NEW YORK--The phone rings with a blocked caller ID but I know who it is. My friend the film critic has just put down the same article I've just finished reading, a front-page blockbuster in the New York Daily News. It says that George W. Bush knew about Karl Rove's scheme to blow CIA agent Valerie Plame's cover for years, that he was Rove's partner in treason from the start, that his claims of ignorance were lies. The News article is anonymously sourced but we know it's 100 percent true because the White House won't deny that Bush is a traitor.

"So they'll impeach him now, right?"

My friend asked the same thing in 2001 when recounts proved Bush lost Florida, when the 9/11 fetishist admitted that he'd never even tried to catch Osama, when WMDs failed to turn up in Iraq, and when his malignant neglect killed hundreds of Americans in post-Katrina New Orleans.

"This means impeachment. Right?" Wrong.

25 October 2005

Bottle of Blog: People, Please, Get Your Horseshit Story Straight

Since we're on the eve on multiple indictments involving the White House, the Gee Oh Pee talking point for the whole last week has been that there's no real crime and that any indictments will just be for something silly like perjury or obstruction of justice. And the only reason for those indictments will be not that anyone actually did anything wrong, but just so the prosecutor can justify has use of taxpayer dollars. For instance, we had:

Tom DeLay, who insisted that Bill Clinton must either resign or be impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice:

I know Karl Rove. I know that he's never intentionally violated the law.

Digby: It's The Cover-Up

There is a reason why the saying "it's not the crime, it's the cover-up" has become a truism in these high profile political scandals. In the first place, no matter who does it, when someone covers up a crime they tend to make it more difficult to prosecute it, obviously. For instance, suppose that Novak and Rove conspired to get their stories straight. You can't prove what was originally said because they've decided to lie about it. But if you can prove that they lied to the authorities or took affirmative measures to obstruct an investigation in which it could have been found that they committed a crime, you prosecute. Committing a crime to cover up something that may or may not be a crime is still a crime.

Digby: "History, we don't know. We'll all be dead"

"History, we don't know. We'll all be dead."

It's clear that the White House defense is to slime Joe Wilson some more. The Washington Post helpfully kicked off the new campaign just this morning.

Top administration officials are looking at federal indictments for crimes committed while sliming Joseph Wilson and they just keep at it. These people really do take that "stay the course" thing seriously, don't they?

Digby: Do The Wild Kabuki!

Via Think Progress:
CBS’ JOHN ROBERTS: Lawyers familiar with the case think Wednesday is when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will make known his decision, and that there will be indictments. Supporters say Rove and the vice president’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, are in legal jeopardy. But they insisted today the two are secondary players, that it was an unidentified Mr. X who actually gave the name of CIA agent V alerie Plame to reporters.

Billmon: All Roads Lead to Rome

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica has found a key piece of the Plamegate puzzle – one that at least indirectly connects the White House to the forged evidence of an Iraqi deal to buy uranium from Niger. Laura Rozen explains:
Investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002 . . .

. . . Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons.

Laura suggests this discovery may help answer two of the Big Questions raised by the Plame affair: Why did the Niger uranium claim keep drifting (Judy Miller-like) into the president's speeches during the Iraq War sales campaign? And why did the White House geek out so thoroughly when Joe Wilson started talking to reporters about his little trip to Niameys?

A message from Project Censored

OPEC AND THE ECONOMIC CONQUEST OF IRAQ
Why Iraq Still sells its oil ý la cartel
Twilight of the neocon gods

Exclusive to Harper's Magazine
Monday, October 24, 2005
By Greg Palast

Note: On Saturday, October 22, Greg Palast and his co-author, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, received a Project Censored award, the
"alternative Pulitzer Prize," for their report, JIM CROW RETURNS TO THE VOTING BOOTH: DOES AMERICA HAVE AN APARTHEID VOTE-COUNTING SYSTEM? http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2006/index.htm#3

The Palast investigative team received a second award for uncovering the State Department's confidential pre-war plans for the economic conquest of Iraq.
http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2006/index.htm#8

By special arrangement with Harper's magazine, we are reproducing here for the first time the entire updated article on the US government's secret schemes for seizing control of the oil fields of Iraq....


TWO AND A HALF YEARS AND $202 BILLION into the war in Iraq, the United States has at least one significant new asset to show for it: effective membership, through our control of Iraq's energy policy, in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Arab-dominated oil cartel.


Just what to do with this proxy power has been, almost since
President Bush's first inaugural, the cause of a pitched battle between neoconservatives at the Pentagon, on the one hand, and the State Department and the oil industry, on the other. At issue is whether Iraq will remain a member in good standing of OPEC, upholding production limits and thereby high prices, or a mutinous spoiler that could topple the Arab oligopoly.


According to insiders and to documents obtained from the State
Department, the neocons, once in command, are now in full retreat. Iraq's system of oil production, after a year of failed free-market experimentation, is being re-created almost entirely on the lines originally laid out by Saddam Hussein.


Under the quiet direction of U.S. oil company executives working with the State Department, the Iraqis have discarded the neocon vision of a laissez faire, privatized oil operation in favor of one shackled to quotas set by OPEC, which have been key to the 148% rise in oil prices since the beginning of 2002. This rise is estimated to have cost the U.S. economy 1.5% of its GDP, or a third of its total growth during the period.


Given this economic blow, and given that OPEC states account for 46% of America's oil imports, it may seem odd that the United States' "remaking" of Iraq would allow for a national oil company that props up OPEC's price gouging. And in fact the original scheme for reconstruction, at least the one favored by neoconservatives, was to privatize Iraq's oil entirely and thereby undermine the oil cartel. One intellectual godfather of this strategy was Ariel Cohen of the
Heritage Foundation, who in September 2002 published (with Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr.) a post-invasion plan, "The Road to Economic Prosperity for a Post-Saddam Iraq," that put forward the idea of using Iraq to smash OPEC. Cohen explained to me how such an extraordinary geopolitical feat might be accomplished. OPEC maintains high oil prices by suppressing production through a quota system effectively imposed on each member by Saudi Arabia, which reigns by dint of its overwhelming reserves. The Saudis, to maintain their control on pricing, must keep a lid on production from other members-particularly Iraq, which has the second greatest proven reserves.


Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq adhered to the OPEC quota limit
(historically set to equal Iran's, now 3.96 million barrels a day) via state ownership of all fields. Cohen reasoned that if Iraq's fields were broken up and sold off, a dozen competing operators would quickly crank up production from their individual patches to the maximum possible, swiftly raising Iraq's total output to 6 million barrels a day. This extra crude would flood world petroleum markets, OPEC would devolve into mass cheating and overproduction, oil prices would fall over a cliff, and Saudi Arabia-both economically and politically - would fall to its knees.


By February 2003, Cohen's position had been enshrined as official policy, in the form of a hundred-page blueprint for the occupied nation titled, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth"-a plan that generally embodied the principles for postwar Iraq favored by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and the Iran-Contra figure Elliott Abrams, now Deputy National Security Adviser. Nominally written by a committee of
Defense, State, and Treasury officials, the blueprint was in fact the brainchild of a platoon of corporate lobbyists, chief among them the flattax fanatic Grover Norquist. From overhauling tax rates to rewriting copyright law, the document mapped out a radical makeover of Iraq as a free-market Xanadu-a sort of Chile on the Tigris-including, on page 73, the sell-off of the nation's crown jewels: "privatization... [of] the oil and supporting industries."


Following the U.S. military's swift advance to Baghdad, those
skeptical of the neocon plan were summarily brushed aside. Chief among the castoffs was General Jay Garner, the shortlived occupation viceroy who on the very night he arrived in Baghdad from Kuwait received a call from Rumsfeld informing him of his dismissal. When I met with Garner last March at the Washington offices of L3 Corporation's giant security subsidiary he now heads, the general told me that he had resisted imposing on Iraqis the plan's sell-off of assets, especially the oil. "That's just one fight you don't have
to take on right now," he said. "You don't want to end the day with more enemies than you started with."


In plotting the destruction of OPEC, the neocons failed to predict the virulent resistance of insurgent forces: the U.S. oil industry itself. From the outset of the planning for war, U.S. oil executives had thrown in their lot with the pragmatists at the State Department and the National Security Council. Within weeks of the first inaugural, prominent Iraqi expatriates-many with ties to U.S. industry-were invited to secret discussions directed by Pamela Quanrud, an NSC economics expert now employed at State. "It quickly became an oil group," one participant, Falah Aljibury, told me. Aljibury, an adviser to Amerada Hess's oil trading arm and to
investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, who once served as a back channel between the United States and Iraq during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, cut ties to the Hussein regime following the invasion of Kuwait.


The working group's ideas about the war had been far less starry-eyed than those of the neocons. "The petroleum industry, the chemical industry, the banking industry-they'd hoped that Iraq would go for a revolution like in the past and government was shut down for two or three days," Aljibury told me. "You have a martial law . . . and say Iraq is being liberated and everybody stay where they are . . . Everything as is." On this plan, Hussein would simply have been
replaced by some former Baathist general. One candidate was General Nizar Khazraji, Saddam's former army chief of staff, who at the time was under house arrest in Denmark pending charges for war crimes. (Khazraji was seen in Iraq a month after the U.S. invasion, but he soon disappeared and has not been heard from since.)


Roughly six months before the invasion, the Bush administration designated Philip Carroll to advise the Iraqi Oil Ministry once U.S. tanks entered Baghdad. Carroll had been CEO of both Fluor Corporation, now a major contractor in Iraq, and, earlier, of Royal Dutch/Shell's U.S. division. In May 2003, a month after his arrival in Iraq, Carroll made headlines when he told the Washington Post that Iraq might break with OPEC: "[Iraqis] have from time to time, because
of compelling national interest, elected to opt out of the quota system and pursue their own path. . . . They may elect to do that same thing. To me, it's a very important national question." Carroll later told me, though, that he personally would not have been supportive of privatizing oil fields. "Nobody in their right mind would have thought of doing that," he said.


Soon after Carroll resigned his post in September 2003, the new provisional government appointed an oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum. Uloum (who had been maneuvered into the job by then-neocon favorite Ahmad Chalabi) quickly fired Muhammad al-Jiburi, chief of Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization, and Thamer Ghadhban, the expert in charge of the southern oil fields, both of whom had been trusted by the Western oil industry. Production faltered from a combination of incompetence, wholesale theft (Iraq's oil was unmetered), sabotage, and corruption that one oilman told me was
"rampant," with "direct payoffs to government officials by commercial operators."


With pipelines exploding daily, the fantasy of remaking Iraq's oil industry also went up in flames. Carroll was replaced by another Houston oil chieftain, Rob McKee, a former executive vice-president of ConocoPhillips and currently the chairman-even during his tenure in Baghdad-of Enventure, an oil-drilling supply subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation. McKee had little tolerance for the neocons' threat to privatize the oil fields. A close associate of McKee's and
the executive adviser to Hess's trading arm, Ed Morse, told me that "Rob was very promotive of putting in place a really strong national oil company," even if he had to act over the objections of the Iraqi Governing Council. Morse, who says he takes as many as six calls a day from the Bush Administration regarding Iraq, is one of the men to whom Washington turns to obtain the views of Big Oil. Like Carroll and McKee, Morse sneers at what he calls "the obsession of neo-conservative writers on ways to undermine OPEC." Iraqis, says Morse, know that if they pump 6 million barrels a day, i.e., 2 million above their expected OPEC quota, "they will crash the oil
market" and bring down their own economy.


In November 2003, McKee quietly ordered up a new plan for Iraq's oil. The drafting would be overseen by a "senior adviser," Amy Jaffe, who had worked for Morse when he held the formidable title of Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations-James Baker III Institute Joint Committee on Petroleum Security. Jaffe now works for Baker, the former Secretary of State, whose law firm serves as counsel to both
ExxonMobil and the defense minister of Saudi Arabia. The plan,
nominally written by State Department contractor BearingPoint, was guided, says Jaffe, by a handful of oil industry consultants and executives.

For months, the State Department officially denied the existence of this 323-page plan for Iraq's oil, but when I identified the document's title from my sources and threatened legal action, I was able to obtain the complete report, dated December 2003 and entitled "Options for Developing a Long Term Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry." The multi-volume document describes seven possible models of oil production for Iraq, each one merely a different flavor of a single option: the creation of a state-owned oil company. The seven options
ranged from the Saudi Aramco model, in which the government owns the whole operation from reserves to pipelines, to the Azerbaijan model, in which the state-owned assets are operated almost entirely by "IOCs" (International Oil Companies). The drafters had little regard for the "self-financing" system, such as Saudi Arabia's, which bars IOCs from the fields; they prefer the production-sharing agreement (PSA) model, under which the state maintains official title to the reserves but operation and control are given to foreign oil companies. These companies then manage, fund, and equip crude extraction in exchange for a percentage of sales receipts.


While promoting IOC control of the fields, the authors take care to warn the Iraqi government against attempting to squeeze IOC profits: "Countries that do not offer risk-adjusted rates of return equal to or above other nations will be unlikely to achieve significant levels of investment, regardless of the richness of their geology." Indeed, to outbid other nations for Big Oil's favor will require Iraq to turn over quite a large share of profits, especially when competing against countries such as Azerbaijan that have given away the store. The Azeri government, notes the report, has "been able to partially overcome their risk profile and attract billions of dollars of investment by offering a contractual balance of commercial interests within the risk contract." This refers to the fact that Azerbaijan, despite its poor oil quality and poor location, drew in the IOCs via
scandalous splits of revenue allowed by the nation's corrupt
government.


Given how easily the interests of OPEC and those of the IOCs can be aligned, it is certainly understandable why smashing the oil cartel would not strike oilmen as a good idea. In 2004, with oil approaching the $50-a-barrel mark all year, the major U.S. oil companies posted record or near record profits. ConocoPhillips, Rob McKee's company, this February reported a doubling of its quarterly profits from the previous year, which itself had been a company record; Carroll's former employer, Shell, posted a record-breaking $4.48 billion in
fourth-quarter earnings. ExxonMobil last year reported the largest one-year operating profit of any corporation in U.S. history.


When I talked to Ariel Cohen at Heritage, his dream of smashing OPEC in shambles, he blamed the State Department for acquiescing to the Saudis and to Russia, which also benefit s from selling oil at high OPEC prices. The poisonous policies were influenced, he said, by "Arab economists hired by the State Department who are basically supporting the witches' brew of the Saudi royal family and the Soviet ostblock . . . because the Saudis are interested in maximizing their market share and they're not interested in fast growth of the Iraqi
output."


According to Morse, the switch to an OPEC-friendly policy for Iraq was driven by Dick Cheney himself. "The person who is most influential in running American energy policy is the Vice President," who, says Morse, "thinks that security begins by . . . letting prices follow wherever they may."


Even, I asked, if those are artificially high prices, set by OPEC? "The VP's office [has] not pursued a policy in Iraq that would lead to a rapid opening of the Iraqi energy sector . . . so they have not done anything, either with producers or energy policy, that would put us on a track to say, 'We're going to put a squeeze on OPEC.'"


Opposition to OPEC was handled in a style that would have made Saddam proud. On May 20, 2004, Iraqi police raided Ahmad Chalabi's home in Baghdad and carted away his computers and files. Chalabi was hunted by his own government: the charge was espionage, no less, for Iran. Chalabi's Governing Council was soon shut down and, crucially, Bahr al-Uloum was yanked from the Oil Ministry and replaced by the very men he had removed: Thamer Ghadhban, who took al-Uloum's job at the
oil ministry and Chalabi rival Muhammad al-Jiburi who was made
minister of trade.


But just when you thought the fat lady sang for the neo-cons, who should rise from his crypt eight months later but Ahmad Chalabi. In January 2005, Chalabi cut a deal with his former oil minister's father, a Shia power broker, and rode that religious ethnic vote back into office. Chalabi landed himself the post of Second Deputy Prime Minister and, in addition, the tantalizing title of interim oil minister. The espionage investigation was dropped; the King of Jordan offered to pardon Chalabi for the $72 million missing from Chalabi's
former bank; and Chalabi once again turned over his oil ministry to Sheik al-Uloum's son. The Texans' OPEC man Ghadhban, was again kicked downstairs.


But Chalabi had learned his lesson: don't mess with Texas, or the Texan's favorite cartel. A chastened Chalabi now endorses Iraq's cooperation with OPEC's fleecing of the planet's oil consumers.


And Dick Cheney, far from "putting the squeeze on OPEC," has taken his de facto seat there, assenting by silence to the oil monopoly's piratical price gouging. But hasn't OPEC's stratospheric crude prices choked the life out of America's auto industry and bankrupted half a dozen airlines? In the Vice-President's bunker the elimination of jobs of Democratic-leaning union members is likely seen as a bonus
for the good deed of boosting oil industry profits far above the ozone layer.


**********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. This is his fourth investigative report for Harper's Magazine. Leni von Eckardt was chief researcher with Palast on this project. This is the Palast team's fifth Project Censored award from California State University's school of journalism.

The BBC Television Newsnight broadcast of this story was produced by Meirion Jones. View the BBC report and sign up for Palast's investigation updates at www.GregPalast.com


--
Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave.
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
707-664-2588
http://www.projectcensored.org/

Medicating Aliah

When state mental health officials fall under the influence of Big Pharma, the burden falls on captive patients. Like this 13-year-old girl.

Rob Waters
May/June 2005 Issue

ALIAH GLEASON IS A BIG, lively girl with a round face, a quick wit, and a sharp tongue. She's 13 and in eighth grade at Dessau Middle School in Pflugerville, Texas, an Austin suburb, but could pass for several years older. She is the second of four daughters of Calvin and Anaka Gleason, an African American couple who run a struggling business taking people on casino bus trips.

In the early part of seventh grade, Aliah was a B and C student who "got in trouble for running my mouth." Sometimes her antics went overboard—like the time she barked at a teacher she thought was ugly. "I was calling this teacher a man because she had a mustache," Aliah recalled over breakfast with her parents at an Austin restaurant.

School officials considered Aliah disruptive, deemed her to have an "oppositional disorder," and placed her in a special education track. Her parents viewed her as a spirited child who was bright but had a tendency to argue and clown. Then one day, psychologists from the University of Texas (UT) visited the school to conduct a mental health screening for sixth- and seventh-grade girls, and Aliah's life took a dramatic turn.

DeLay wins shredder at Texas auction, is lampooned

DeLay wins shredder at Texas auction, is lampooned

RAW STORY

Indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) bid on a wicker basket two weekends ago at the Needville Harvest Festival in Fort Bend County in his home state. And he won not just the basket, but the gadget inside it, too — a paper shredder, Roll Call's Mary Anne Akers reports Tuesday. Excerpts.

#

The shredder purchase would have perhaps remained a secret if DeLay’s potential 2006 Democratic opponent, Nick Lampson, hadn’t gleefully spilled the beans at a fundraiser last week. A national political reporter was also on hand at the festival to witness the basket/shredder bid. (So stay tuned for more details, including how much the Hammer paid for the shredder.)

Galloway rejects senate perjury claims

Staff and agencies
Tuesday October 25, 2005

A furious George Galloway today challenged US senators to charge him with perjury over claims that he solicited money from Saddam Hussein's oil-for-food programme and lied about it under oath.

The US Senate inquiry into the Bethnal Green and Bow MP's alleged involvement in the saga claims to have discovered $150,000 (£85,000) in Iraqi oil money in his estranged wife's bank account.

TAPPED: Hadley Named

La Repubblica has a dynamite series this week on the origin of the yellowcake forgeries. Laura Rozen reports:
With Patrick Fitzgerald widely expected to announce indictments in the CIA leaks investigation, questions are again being raised about the murky matter that first led to the appointment of the special counsel: namely, how the Bush White House came into possession of discredited Italian intelligence reports claiming that Iraq sought uranium "yellowcake" from Niger.

The key documents supposedly proving the Iraqi attempt turned out to be crude forgeries on official stationery stolen from the African nation's Rome embassy. Among the most tantalizing aspects of the debate over the Iraq War is the origin of those fake documents and the role of the Italian intelligence services in disseminating them.

Big Ben

Bernanke's a great choice for Fed chairman, but is he tough enough on inflation?
By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, Oct. 24, 2005, at 3:05 PM PT

At last, President Bush has found somebody in the White House who is truly qualified for a senior non-White House appointment. Today, he named Benjamin Bernanke, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Economists, usually a back-biting bunch, are nearly universal in their praise for Bernanke. The stock market is pleased, as the key indices are up on the day. The Senate, which has to confirm Bernanke, is enthusiastic as well, with Democratic (Paul Sarbanes) and Republican (Robert Bennett) members of the Senate Banking Committee appearing on CNBC to support the nomination. The punters at Intrade, who had Bernanke as the odds-on favorite, are also surely satisfied: Hey, the guy's middle name is "peace." Literally. Bernanke is an excellent economist with excellent credentials. He's a highly respected scholar who also writes books that are accessible to laypeople. (See his Essays on the Great Depression.) And he's also been blessed with excellent timing. After all, the last few years have not been kind to Republican-leaning academic economists interested in government service. Working in the Bush administration meant selling a set of dishonest fiscal policies, crafting public policies that were anathema to their beliefs (from steel tariffs to the Medicare prescription-drug plan), and occasionally having to disavow their own writings.

Let's Go To The Movies

Laura Donnelly
October 21, 2005

So if you're, say, a right-wing evangelical Christian, you might rely on your church for a lot of important things—among them, spiritual guidance and a like-minded community. In a lot of cases, you might also get your political leanings from your church (intelligent design in public schools, anyone?). But in a relatively new phenomenon, evangelical Christian churches are increasingly acting as distribution hubs for popular culture. Remember "The Passion Of The Christ?" Much of its overwhelming success came from church groups renting out theaters for screenings. And this weekend, the movie "Left Behind: World At War" opens in not a single commercial theater—but it will be showing in more than 3,000 churches nationwide. That's a pretty big number. I'll wager there's not going to be nearly so many progressives gathering for movie-watching this weekend.

Iraq war forces Western military rethink says IISS

By Reuters, Tuesday 25 October, 2005 10:35

Western military powers are being forced to rethink strategy because conflict in Iraq has shown the limits of their conventional armies, the International Institute of Strategic Studies said on Thursday.

In its annual report on global military might, “The Military Balance”, the London-based think-tank said strategists had hoped new technology would let them target enemies accurately from ships and planes, avoiding protracted ground battles.

But it said conventional armies have been sucked into messy conflicts, often in towns, where they face enemies invulnerable to the advanced gadgetry that was supposed to dissipate the fog of war and herald a new era in warfare.

The White House cabal

By Lawrence B. Wilkerson, LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005.

IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

A bold book argues that thousands of American towns were deliberately kept whites-only.

Reviewed by Laura Wexler
Sunday, October 23, 2005; BW03

SUNDOWN TOWNS

A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
By James W. Loewen
New Press. 562 pp. $29.95

In Oct. 2001, James W. Loewen stopped at a convenience store in the small Illinois town of Anna -- a name that, as a store clerk confirmed, stands for "Ain't No Niggers Allowed."

On Nov. 8, 1909, nearly a century before Loewen stepped into the store, a mob of angry white citizens drove out Anna's 40 or so black families following the lynching in a nearby town of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Anna became all-white literally overnight, Loewen reports, and embraced racial exclusiveness for the long haul. According to the 2000 census, just one family with a black member lives among Anna's 7,000 residents.

Release of Cisneros Report Ordered

Bloomberg News
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A11

A federal appeals court ordered the release of a final report yesterday in a decade-long investigation of former Housing and Urban Development secretary Henry G. Cisneros.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in an order that the time has come for independent counsel David M. Barrett to end the inquiry, which has cost more than $21 million, government records show.

Cheney Plan Exempts CIA From Bill Barring Abuse of Detainees

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A01

The Bush administration has proposed exempting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency from a legislative measure endorsed earlier this month by 90 members of the Senate that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoners in U.S. custody.

The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the company of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, states that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by "an element of the United States government" other than the Defense Department.

Bus Ride Shook a Nation's Conscience

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A01

Rosa Parks, the dignified African American seamstress whose refusal to surrender a bus seat to a white man launched the modern civil rights movement and inspired generations of activists, died last night at her home in Detroit, the Wayne County medical examiner's office said. She was 92.

No cause of death was reported immediately. She had dementia since 2002.

Bernanke Seen as Safe Pick For a White House in Straits

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A04

In nominating Ben S. Bernanke as the next Federal Reserve Board chairman, President Bush turned to a candidate for the job with unassailable credentials and enough distance from the White House to blunt charges of cronyism or ideological motivations, former White House officials and economists said yesterday.

The president had considered nominees who may have left a deeper conservative stamp on the Fed. Conversely, he had the opportunity to bridge the partisan divide by nominating internal Fed candidates highly regarded by retiring Chairman Alan Greenspan who happened to be either Democratic or politically independent.

24 October 2005

The Daily Howler - 10/24/05

TIMES TURNS GLOOM-AND-DOOMY! The Times talked up the mayor it loves—then went gloom-and-doomy on Bush: // link // print // previous // next //
MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2005

TIMES TURNS GLOOM-AND-DOOMY: We had to laugh at Saturday’s Times editorial concerning last week’s NAEP results. “Happy Talk on School Reform,” read the headline; the editors battered President Bush for doing what they themselves often do—for pretending that things may be better in the schools than a set of test scores really suggests. The Times just hates that “happy talk”—now. But uh oh! Just last spring, the Times pretended that New York City schools were gaining big ground thanks to Mayor Bloomberg’s brilliant policies (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/6/05, with links to prior reporting). But now, when Bush does much the same thing, the Times rises up in high dudgeon. The Times talks happy—for pols they like. For Bush, they turn gloom-and-doomy.

Avedon Carol: Peasants don't need newspapers

Susan at An Age Like This describes the content of a recent George F. Will column:
American workers are just going to have to settle for being poor again, a hundred years after Henry Ford realized he could sell more cars by lifting his employees up with a decent living wage. Not anymore.
The occasion for this is another major company having eaten itself alive. Honorable exception (non-presstitute) Paul Krugman on The Big Squeeze:
But Delphi's bankruptcy is a much bigger deal than your ordinary case of corporate failure and bad, self-dealing management. If Delphi slashes wages and defaults on its pension obligations, the rest of the auto industry may well be tempted - or forced - to do the same. And that will mark the end of the era in which ordinary working Americans could be part of the middle class.
Reading the vastly dishonest Will's column, I wonder why it's never previously occurred to me to refer to him as "George F. Swill" - it's not as if he hasn't earned that name a thousand times over.

Arthur Silber: Dispatch from Bizarro World

Speaking of the different kinds of narrative (some thoughts here, with more to come), here's an example of where you end up when you employ fantasy to address real-world problems.

An editorial in the NY Sun notes what it views as the self-cannibalizing going on at the NYT (that's what "autophagy" means, doncha just love new words?), and makes one true (and obvious) observation:

While she was in jail, the Times ran editorial after editorial defending [Miller]. Now, only days after she emerged, her colleagues have tried to transform her from First Amendment hero to "Miss Run Amok," not even fit to work at the paper.

Poll: Americans more accepting

By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Americans are overwhelmingly people of faith, and a new survey shows they are holding onto a traditional ideal of marriage and family. Yet as fewer families meet that ideal, they are becoming more accepting of divorce, cohabitation, and nontraditional family situations - across religious groupings.

"Faith and Family in America," a survey released last week by PBS's Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, highlights the contradictions between beliefs and reality, explores views on moral values, and compares religious practices of traditional and nontraditional families. The TV show begins a four-part series on the subject this weekend.

While the survey reveals that 71 percent of Americans believe "God's plan for marriage is one man, one woman, for life," only 22 percent say they see divorce as a sin. Even among religious conservatives (Protestant or Catholic), only about one-third say divorce is sinful. Protestants are more likely than other groups to get married, but they are no more likely to stay married.