More on Iraqi peace overtures....

...MICHAEL ISIKOFF [of Newsweek]: You know, there are a lot of games being played on this story and that's why it has to be murky at this point. It is hard to know. You have various agendas. Mr. Perle and his allies inside the pentagon have been at war with the C.I.A. for some time about this.- You have congressional investigators that are raising questions about the role of Mr. MALUF, who was a member of the secret pentagon intelligence team that was reviewing intelligence and back channel diplomacy that was not going through proper channels, not being reported to Secretary of State Powell and the diplomats who were responsible for this. So, it is -- It is very hard to know what to make of this at this point with a lot of--perhaps a lot of different agendas being pushed on this one.-

Complete interview here.

Verifiable voting....

The effort to standardize touch-screen voting with no paper trail must be stopped.

Go here to find out more and join the campaign.

More on Iraqi peace overtures….

Josh Marshal at Talking Points Memo is suspicious of the timing and veracity of the Iraqi peace story.

The main players--Hage and Maloof--appear to have ulterior motives for getting their version of the tale out there at this time. And neither man appears to be of sterling character.

No surprises there! Hage is an arms dealer and Maloof a protégé of Richard Perle. As for ulterior motives, doesn't every source in journalistic history have them?

While Marshall’s doubts do make me more cautious about the story, they don’t disprove it.

I hope journalists and Democrats with spine (an oxymoron) will pursue the matter.

Iraqi-gate...

The story of the Bush administration's arrogant dismissal of Iraq's last-ditch, desperate efforts to avoid war is being picked up by news outlets.

More than any allegation made to date, this one has the potential to bring Bush down. Call your elected representatives and urge them to investigate the matter.

Bush may never be tried for war crimes, but he should at the very least be impeached.

AP story here.

War-crimes...

With time running out, Saddam Hussein's government tried desperately to avert war by negotiating through back channels with Bush administration officials.

They were summarily rebuffed.

Or, as Richard Perle—hawk, neoconservative, resident fellow at the rightwing American Enterprise Institute and former chairman and current member of the Defense Policy Board—told the NY Times, "The message was, `Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad.' "

How do you like that, “we?” This whole Iraqi tragedy wouldn’t have happened if sorry-assed old rich men, like Perle, Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz had to patrol the streets of Baghdad with M16s.

But I digress.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal.

Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct an independent search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections.

[…]

…Mr. Obeidi [chief of foreign operations of the Iraqi Intelligence Service] explained that the Iraqis wanted to cooperate with the Americans and could not understand why the Americans were focused on Iraq rather than on countries, like Iran, that have long supported terrorists, Mr. Hage [the Lebanese-American businessman] said. The Iraqi seemed desperate, Mr. Hage said, "like someone who feared for his own safety, although he tried to hide it."

Mr. Obeidi told Mr. Hage that Iraq would make deals to avoid war, including helping in the Mideast peace process. "He said, if this is about oil, we will talk about U.S. oil concessions," Mr. Hage recalled. "If it is about the peace process, then we can talk. If this is about weapons of mass destruction, let the Americans send over their people. There are no weapons of mass destruction."

Why have Iraqis so seriously underestimated the American capacity for treachery? In 1990, Saddam Hussein believed U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Gillespie, when she announced that America had no interest in “territorial disputes between Iraq and its Arab neighbors.” Four months later, he invaded Kuwait.

Thirteen years later, his flunkies trusted Richard Perle, leading proponent of the invasion of Iraq, to plead their case against war to the Bush administration.

Did they not know who they were talking to? Might as well ask Satan to relay your repentance to God.

Perle is now downplaying the importance of his contact with Mr. Hage, claiming disbelief that the overture was authentic. No matter. Principled men grasp at any straw to avoid the sort of bloodshed that occurred in Iraq.

The men in the Bush White House are anything but principled.

Justice demands that those responsible for the lies and manipulation that led to the slaughter in Iraq be tried for war-crimes.

Complete story here.

Bush's magic marker strikes again....

This is all over the net, but in case you haven't seen it, half of the 186 pages of a recently released Justice Department report on diversity among its attorneys was blacked out.

...The blacked-out pages betray a Justice Department that does not want America to know what happens after people are hired. The full report is available on a Web site called the Memory Hole, which electronically lifted the blacked-out sections. Among the conclusions of the full report were:

"When controlling for component, grade, and salary, we found that the average minority is currently residing approximately one-third step lower than the average white and the average woman is currently residing approximately one-half step lower than the average man. These effects are statistically significant."

"Race and gender combine for a particularly strong negative effect of identity for minority women."

"Section chiefs are an extremely critical element of the department's diversity climate. They have significant authority in recruitment, hiring, promotion, performance appraisal, case assignment, and career development. The section chief work force is not diverse, and turnover is low. This pattern, combined with the generally low attention that these managers pay to staff career development, leads minorities to perceive a lack of advancement opportunities."

Complete op-ed here.

Touch-screen vote manipulation.…

Long article on the dangers of converting to touch-screen voting. A must-read if you care about democracy in America.

…Roxanne Jekot, who has put much of her professional and personal life on hold to work on the issue full time, puts it even more strongly. "Corporate America is very close to running this country. The only thing that is stopping them from taking total control are the pesky voters. That's why there's such a drive to control the vote. What we're seeing is the corporatisation of the last shred of democracy.

"I feel that unless we stop it here and stop it now," she says, "my kids won't grow up to have a right to vote at all."

Complete story here.

Thanks to This Modern World for the link.

Such hatred....

The consecration of a gay man as an Anglican bishop in New Hampshire has evoked fury from members of a religion allegedly based on love of one's fellow human beings.

The rage seems particularly extreme in Africa where any support has been greeted with fanatical condemnation.

...But such remarks drew condemnation from conservative church leaders, who said there was no room for compromise on an issue like homosexuality. A leader of the African Christian Democratic Party in South Africa, Louis Green, said Mr. Ndungane and others who support the gay bishop are in need of "spiritual guidance and biblical insight."

"Although God loves everyone, he does not condone sinful behavior," Mr. Green told the South African Press Association. "The Bible equates homosexuality with perversity and as Christians we cannot interpret God's word to suit modern lifestyles."

On the wider question of whether gays ought to be allowed to marry or enter the priesthood, Nigeria's Anglicans have been unequivocal in their opposition.

"We totally reject and renounce this obnoxious attitude and behavior," the church said in a statement issued last month.

"It is devilish and satanic. It comes directly from the pit of hell. It is an idea sponsored by Satan himself and being executed by his followers and adherents who have infiltrated the church."

You've got to wonder when people feel so vehmently about an issue that, presumably, doesn't personally affect them.

Or does it?

Complete story here.